The Pretender

I should mention at this point that on every trip I have been on, and this is my eighth, that at some point or points, I seem to go through an emotional low point. My low point was Thursday and Friday, and not just because I was sick.

I was discouraged by the distance between the village and the city, La Ceiba, where I intended to rent a house for our team and my family. Somewhere on the long drive it became apparent to me that this was an impractical distance to be working from. And then the rivers were inadequate. More discouragement and frustration. We would need to reevaluate the entire plan.

And driving for so many hours with Humberto, I was reminded of something about him. That is, there are still formidable language barriers between us. I estimate we only understand about 70% of what each other says. With better communication, my misconceptions about the inadequacy of the river or of the distance could have been avoided. I would like to blame someone.

All these things together can have a crushing feeling. It would be easier if it were just me, but I know my family and a large group of students are on the way, and we need to get things arranged, and this makes the emotional pressure worse.

My thoughts run away. At times I feel like a pretender. Who do I think I am fooling? This is a ridiculously difficult task. Why am I even doing this? I should get a real job and make lots of money and make myself comfortable. Forget nobility, ignore calling. They are over rated.

But then I reconnect. I talk to The M who believes in me so strongly. I talk to Robin, the missionary to the deaf who lives here and can relate. I get some sleep and some medicine, and spend some time praying. Sanity returns. Mental anguish is banished. Peace, like a river, attendeth my way.

Psalm 25 comforts me:
"...turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of my distress, and forgive all my sins."

The Long Road Home

I ran through the rain to the truck using the family's laminated table cloth as a poncho. The lost keys were found in the door of the truck, thankfully. At that time I started having, how should I say this, bowel trouble. Yeah. Let's leave it at that. The long ugly story made short is this: it was an eight hour drive home in the rain, stopping every couple of hours for me to find a restroom. One such restroom was behind a boulder, another was a five gallon bucket. You get the not-so-pretty picture.*

Of all my trips, I have never forgotten my stomach antibiotics, but I did this time. Thankfully, they are available without a prescription here, as are most drugs. I bought a round of Cipro and some prescription strength Ibuprofen for my back for less than $10 on Saturday. I slept most of Saturday and am feeling much better.

*I would share more, because some of the story is pretty hilarious, but some of my students read this blog, and I don't want to loose what respect they may have for me. It would make my job harder if every time I got up to give a lecture, they would all point and laugh. Oh wait, that happens anyway...

Jerónimo's house

For those of you just tuning in, I am writing from Honduras where I have been for five days on a scouting trip to identify mountian villages with suitable rivers for microhydro projects. I intend to return this summer with my family and groups of college students...

I spent the remainder of Friday morning driving/walking around Mejía and looking at the other two rivers. They must be near enough to the village that runing electric lines is practical, so we couldn't go too far. But all three rivers turned out to be inadequate. They were either too flat or too little. The last one might be able to be used for a very small system to charge batteries only, but it can't be the big system I had in mind. Snap. Here are some photos of us in the medium sized river. When I asked this fellow to stand in the river for a photo, he did so obligingly, and put his machete down. I have seen this before, when I want to take a picture of someone with a mechete or a machine gun, they seem to assume I don't want it in the picture and try to hide it or lay it down. Something is being lost in translation.

(the medium river, flow is about 250 liters/second)

(see his machete politely layed down on a rock?!)

(at first she covers her face with shyness)

(but then she warms up and giggles)

After taking some pictures of some cute kids, we went back to Jerónimo's house for lunch before we departed. There is where I met his 18 year old son, Josue Isaias Funes, who, I was informed, has been saving his money for years to get to the sum of $5000. With this, he intends to pay a "cayote" to smuggle him into the United States, where friends assure him a good income building houses. They told me this matter-of-factly, and I'm sure they didn't realize I found this offensive. The older adults and I tried to discuss with him the folly of doing this, how he might be killed in the process or deptorted in a matter of days. But the televised glamor and mystique of the U.S.A. has him in it's spell, and he intends to go through with it.

I stopped short of telling him that illegal immigrents are not a welcomed social group in the U.S.A., or that I, for one, do not wish to pay his medical bills and children's education through extra taxes, while he avoids taxes all together. That seemed rude in light of the lunch his parents were giving me.

We ate lunch, but my stomach felt a little sub-optimal, so I had trouble eating it all. It was minced chicken with spices and rice with corn tortillas and coffee. It started to rain pretty hard while we ate, and Humberto and I exchanged glances. The problem is there are a few rivers to cross on the road back home, and if they are too high we have to wait or go around. "Go around" means driving around the mountains the long way; the six-hour treck is the short way. So we packed up to go and that's when I realized I didn't have my keys to the truck...

Friday's Trip to Mejía

Mejía is a small village outside of Yoro. When I say "outside" I mean 90 minutes in a four wheel drive on a dirt road in the mountains. But the drive was not that bad, even in the light rain we were having. The rain did slow us down and make things inconvenient. Apparently there is some sort of tropical storm passing over Honduras.

Mejía is a fairly large village. There are 25 homes in the lower, central area I call downtown, and another 55 homes in the surrounding hills, which are obviously the suburbs. I estimate an average of 4 people per home, so that's 320 folks in the greater metropolitan area. Humberto has identified and trained a farmer named Jerónimo to be the pastor of a small church in Mejía. I intoduced myself as Sitting Bull, but nobody got it. As we entered the village, we stopped first at his house.

His house is one of the nicest village houses I have ever seen. He has a screened porch and nice quality interior. Here is a picture of their kitchen. The wood-burning stove is built into the wall and floor and has a chimney going up through the roof. Hanging on a stick above the stove is raw meat, as there is no refrigeration. The next picture shows a work table with meat grinder. Most of the doors and windows were open, and adolescent chickens wandered through the house freely. The only people that seemed to notice the chickens were myself and the youngest boy who liked to chase them. He was about four years old, so I was in good company.

We went to look at the three rivers near the village to assess their suitability for a microhydro electricity generation. First we went to the big river. It had plenty of flow (gallons per second) but no head (vertical drop). Both are required to generate power, at least using the equipment we have. I took this picture of some cows crossing the river to gage the depth.

This river was just too flat ("plano" en Español) to be of use. I was disappointed, but there were still two rivers to go, so perhaps they would be adequate. As we went along, we picked up additional helpers. This fellow, in particular, was brimming with character. His hands were calloused and his teeth were bad, but his countenance was filled with joy and enthusiasm. His name, as best as I could understand, is Abaran Edilberto Armindare. He dresses like the stereotypical village farmer: straw hat, short sleeve button down shirt, rubber boots, and machete slung over his shoulder.

More blogging after lunch...

Road to Yoro (parta dos)

I hope you can read the map. If you click on it, you can see a larger version. On this Google Earth image I have sketched our road to Yoro. I have a hard time believing the scale because it took us so long to get there. If we could fly, it would be only 50 miles, but driving it was more like 150, and it took us about 6 hours. Half the roads were paved and good, the other half not paved, but still OK - much better than the outrageous road to Pueblo Nuevo. See another post for a story about that road.

Arriving in Yoro I found a town whose population I would guess to be 1500. It's big enough to have a bank, a "hospital" or clinic, a few hotels and several restaurants. I couldn't find Wal-Mart, but I'm sure it's there somewhere. The elevation Yoro is around 2500 feet, so it's a little cooler and dryer than La Ceiba, which, impossible as it sounds, may be even more humid than Houston.

At any rate, I tried to go to sleep with my windows open, but someone nearby was burning trash, and the smell of smoke was too strong. I closed the windows and yet, at dawn I was awakened by roosters. It seems to be my lot. I woke up with my lower back so sore and stiff from the long day in the truck, that I could hardly get up. I had to roll out of bed onto the floor and pull myself up with a shelf. I managed to shoot a little video out the window of my hotel room. If you wait for the end, you'll here my rooster friend.

[I'm having trouble uploading this video to YouTube from Honduras. I may have to do it once I get back to the States.]

Here is Yoro's main street. It feels much safer here than in La Ceiba, and this is confirmed to be true by Robin and Humberto, both. It's quaint. And it is near a string of villages we are considering for microhydro projects. No one we asked, however, knows of any gringos living in the entire city.

That night we went to dinner with a couple that Humberto knows. He could be very helpful to us in the project, since he owns a mechanic's shop and is knowledgable about electricity too. He and I were able to talk "voltas" together at dinner. The restaurant was nice, complete with street musicians. I ordered "Tacos Tex Mex" - no kidding. But they didn't seem very Tex Mex, and I should know, believe me.