We Are Blocked in By Angry Protesters

It has been raining  for several weeks now.  The campesinos have disrupted life in Colon while protesting  that a bridge that was washed out several weeks ago still has not been fixed.  They protest by taking over all the roads, including the back roads leading to a town, and cut off all traffic.  What causes this type of protest?  The campesinos feel, and rightly so, that this is the only way they will be heard.

Macho Man says there is  no gasoline in Trujillo.  That makes three days now and the taxistas are unable to pick up fares.  Buses cannot travel between here and Tocoa, the nearest town of any size.  It also means that no fresh produce was delivered  yesterday, so the produce market is pretty much empty.  The bread trucks cannot get through, so there is no bread.  The dairy delivery trucks......well, you get the picture.   MM just came from the market and the grocery store.  He says there is very little to be had, even rice and beans.  The citizens of Trujillo are angry.  They say the campesinos have kidnapped Trujillo and are holding her for ransom

There are semi's from Dole lined up for miles on either side of the road block.  If they are there too much longer you can expect to pay more for bananas, pineapple and other tropical fruits.  Dole uses Puerta Castilla as its biggest port in Central America, and the trucks headed this way are loaded with perishables.

The ambulance from our little hospital cannot get to Tocoa or La Ceiba and we have no ICU, orthopedic surgeons or other specialists, nor the ability to take care of trauma.  There is no CT scanner, no MRI, no NICU nor many other things you expect in a modern hospital.  There certainly is no air rescue. The government has promised in the past not to allow the campesinos to tie up the roads and take cities hostage, but the government knows this could get very ugly very quickly.  They are not doing anything right now because the Human Rights inspectors are coming tomorrow. 



Courtesy La Prensa
Campesinos blocking the road to Trujillo



Human Rights would love to report that Honduras abuses the rights of its citizens.  They will not report that soldiers and police officers are facing a large group of men armed with rifles, shotguns and machetes, along with big sticks and rocks, and have not made any type of aggressive move.

I don't know where this is going, but I hope it will be resolved peaceably.  That is not always the case. 

I will try to write about the construction and post some pictures this week end.

Please pray this will not end in bloodshed. 

We have food in the house.  We are blessed.'

Update:

This morning the Army and the National Police broke up the blockade.  It ended very peacefully, with the campesinos jusst walking away.  The government is going to set up a permanent  post at the entrance to the back road to prevent this from happening again.  That means that everyone going that way will be stopped, and if they don't like you, your car will be searched.  That's OK by me.  I would rather spend a few minutes telling the police who I am and where I live, than to have people blocking the road so that we cannot even get food into Trujillo.  The people here deserve better than that.

There was no bloodshed, so we are blessed.

I Believe in Angels

I believe in angels. I am sure they are sent to us by God to protect us, and sometimes they are sent to us by the prayers of others.  What happened last week  makes me believe in angels more than ever.

Last Sunday I found a white feather on the staircase going to the third floor.  We have no birds in the house.  We don't have feather dusters, feather pillows, or down comforters, so there is no logical reason for that feather to have been in the house.   I picked it up and said, "Thank you, Lord, for the gift of this angel" and then forgot about it.

Tuesday, Macho Man decided it was safe to take down the  2x4 supports to the form for the terrazzo, and then take down the 1 x12 boards that make up the form.  You can see pictures of those here.

MM did not like the way the crew was removing the supports, so he went over to show them a safer, better way to do this.  Well, it turned out to be a lesson in how not to take down supports.  All of the 2 x 4's and a lot of the 1 x 12's, which were studded with long nails, fell in on top of him, completely burying him underneath.    He says his first though was, "I am going to die, right here and now."  Then he thought, "No, I can't do that, not now."  Thank goodness he was in one of the smaller rooms.

Part of the crew started scrambling to dig him out, while others were running to the neighbors for help.  The neighbors turned out in full force with blankets, wet towels, ibuprofen, and anything else they could find to bring they thought would help.  These are people with little or nothing, but they will share what they have with those who have need.  Not only do I classify these as angels, but they truly live their Christianity. 

When  my sweet little Honduran Honeybun surfaced, the score was  boards = 0;  Macho Man = 1 split lip, 1 goose egg on his head, and 1 cut on his hand where one of the nails brushed him.  We both believe God's heavenly angels were there to cover him when the ceiling fell in, and God's earthly angels were there to get him out of what could have been a very serious situation.

Thank God for the angels, and if you are one of those who prays for us, please don't ever stop.

We are blessed

Hallelujah, The Second Floor Terrazzo is Poured!!

I have been promising this would happen 'soon' for a long time  The holdup has been the weather.  We have not had a single dry day since September 23 and there have been torrential rains since then.

The professional man who was going to supply the materials and manpower for the job told us it would take forty hours with 30-35 men and we would have to feed the men every 3-4 hours.  After figuring out the costs, MM decided that it was cheaper to rent a small mixing machine and hire our own manpower.

Monday the 18th, Macho Man made a command decision that it was now or never, even if it was raining.  When he got to the site at 4:40 in the morning there were about forty people waiting to start work.  MM and our usual crew, along with about thirty day workers, started pouring cement.  They did in about 10-11 hours what the professionals said would take 40 hours nonstop.  And they did it cheaper.

These poles are holding up the form for the terrazzo.  Before we can start pouring each of these poles must be equidistant from each other and perfectly straight; the rows must be absolutely straight; and they must all be exactly the same height.  The form for the terrazzo has to also be level, with no cracks between the boards, and the conduits for the electricity and water have to be in place. Before the pour, every room on the first floor must have these poles in place.  They will hold up a little over 2000 sq ft of concrete poured 5" thick.

  

This is the cement mixer.  Quite a bit different than the big cement trucks we are use to seeing.  You can believe this was filled many times Monday.  After filling the mixer and getting the mix to the right consistency, it is poured into wheel barrows and taken up to the form to be emptied and spread, then finished with a trowel to get it level

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The red flex pipes are for the electrical lines.  The white PVC  pipes are the water lines.  You can see the form and the rebar for the floor. You can also see the rebar for one of the columns in the background.  The columns around the house are what tie the first and second floors together

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The oblong box with no rebar in it is to keep an opening in this spot for the staircase.  The boards are for the wheel barrows to travel over to take the cement where it needs to be.

You can see here where part of the pour has already been completed and smoothed out.  Because of the rain, everything had to be covered with tarps, cardboard boxes, cement bags and anything else that would keep the rain off the cement.

This is lunch break.  My sister-in-law, Cheyna, cooked chicken and rice .  We provided Pepsi by the liters.  They seemed to enjoy it, since there was nothing left when they finished.  Look at the faces of these men.  These are not boys, even though most of them are between 17 and 25.  They were there Monday morning at 4:30 AM and they worked in pouring, cold rain most of the day.  Not one of them walked off saying it was too hard a job.  They didn't want to take a morning break or a lunch break until they were done.

Pablo and some of the crew

                                                                                                                               



Getting a little bit of a break

This is what happens when the boss's wife tries to back up in the rain, goes off in the ditch, and hits a big rock.

This is what happens when there are 30-35 men on the job who know they have been treated well and that they are going to get paid at the end of the day; and the boss's wife backed into the ditch

So, now we wait until the cement is cured and we can start laying block again.  We can do a few little things on the first floor.  We can also do some grading so that we can see where the gardens go.  It is not time for the little house to go yet, because we still need it to store supplies and tools in.  

We have had a great work crew, even the temporary help.  The economy is very bad, and there essentially is no work. When there are rumors of work being available, the people will come to you. We have people every day come and ask if there is anything they can do.  The word is already out that Macho Man runs a tight ship, but that he also pays on time and he treats people like humans. 

We are blessed.

Customer Service in Honduras - Not

I wrote once before about how long it took Claro to come install the satellite dish. here  I did not tell you much about long it took them to come fix it after we lost the signal. 

To make a long story short, we called them the first week of June because  the World Cup started the 10th of June.  Nothing is more important to a Honduran  than the World Cup, unless it is when Maraton is playing against Olimpia..  Every time we called, they told us they would be here within the next seven days. The seventh day finally came the 13th of October

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Macho Man missed seeing his games, which made him very depressed.  He doesn't like going to his father's house to watch them, because Don Miguel likes to talk and Juan and Lito like to scream and yell at the game, pretty much like we yell and scream at our favorite teams.  His children say their father could talk if he was under water, and that is probably true ;-D.

Almost a month ago my washer went kaput.  Some kind of  seal broke and I ended up with all the water, soap, bleach and softener in the load on the floor, and it was a large load.

We called the store where we bought the machine and told them the problem.  The owner said,  "Please be patient with us.  The technician has to come from San Pedro.  Because your machine is still under warranty, only a GE technician can fix it."  Then it was, "Oh, he didn't make it last week because the bridge between Tocoa and Trujillo is still out, but he will be here Tuesday.  And he is our technician because the GE Technician can't come".  Huh?  

Tuesday came and went. Of course he didn't make it because a bridge between Tocoa and Trujillo is still not repaired. Then we found out he was coming on a motorcycle because they don't fix your problem the first day.  They make a service call, diagnose the problem, and then they come back and fix the machine, after the part is ordered and received.  The next day.  Not!!

Macho Man called the company and they assured him the technician would come today, Wednesday, at 8:00 AM..  This is Wednesday 8:46 PM, 11:46 PM EST, and guess  who hasn't shown up.  Guess who won't answer the phone, because when he looks at his caller ID, he doesn't want to have to tell us another version of the truth.  I told MM to call them back and tell them his wife is running around naked because she doesn't have any clean clothes.

Thank God for sisters-in-law.  Chayna came today to wish MM Happy Birthday and went home with two loads of work clothes. Guess who will be washing clothes tomorrow by hand. 

We are still blessed. 

Things I Have Learned From Being on Water Restrictions

I talked about water restrictions last Thursday but I really did not know just how restricted it would be for us. The water company said they would turn the water on from 6-9 AM and from 2-7 PM.  They lied!  They lied! THEY LIED!!!

The water might come on somewhere between 6 and 8 AM and it goes off at 9:20 AM.  It might come on at 3PM. and go off again in 15 minutes, and repeat that cycle until 7 PM, but you never know exactly when that 15 minutes will be. 

There is very little water pressure, so little  it can take 20 minutes to fill the tank on the toilet.  Even when the water comes on, we are on the same line as the hotel.  Of course, they get first dibs on the water, and Rufina starts washing clothes and linens; Miguel starts filling the leaky pool; and we have no water, just the sound of the water trying to push the air out of the faucet.  Saturday, they were nice enough to stop everything until we could get a shower, but, it ended up being a bucket bath with cold water.  There was not enough pressure to fill the hot water tank nor to supply the shower.

I have learned some things.  I think I said I had learned pila etiquette, which means you don't put anything in the clean water.  The clean water gets scooped up with a clean bowl and poured over whatever you are washing or rinsing.  When you are throughyou scoop up a bowl for the next person, who might need to wash his hands, because you don't want him to put his hands into the clean water.

I can now take a bucket bath in less than two minutes using less than one gallon of cold water.  The average 8 1//2 minute shower in the USA  uses 17.2 gallons of water.  Have a teenager?  Ever seen him/her take and 8 minute shower?

The average American, if he lets the water run while he brushes his teeth, wastes 2 gallons of water a day.  We have learned to fill a 20 ounce glass and both of us can brush our teeth and leave some for the next morning.

Today we had to wash a load of MM's work clothes.  It took six 5 gallon buckets of water for each cycle and MM had to carry each of those  buckets up two flights of stairs.  That is 12 buckets of  water, 60 gallons.  We hooked up to the hotel's outside faucet, because we had no water.

If you take your bath late in the afternoon, you can use the same clothes the next day.  Then you put  the shirt in the dirty clothes basket and wear the pants again the next day.  Except Macho Man.  He is allowed to change shirts twice a day and pants every day, if he has been working on the house.

Baby wipes are great for wiping down if you have no water.  They are refreshing, really, and they take off makeup better than anything else I've tried.  I like the ones with aloe the best.  They seem to moisturize the best.  And you don't feel sticky.

If you go swimming late in the afternoon, you may not be 100% clean, but you feel clean.  The hotel will let us do that.  They even told us to bathe in the pool, but I have dreams of them turning on the aerater and mountains of soapsuds flowing all over the place.

The toilet does not need to be flushed every time it is used.  Unless you like lugging 5 gallon buckets around. 

If you get up in the morning every day, and you turn on your faucet and get water, you are better off than much of the world.  If that water is clean, you are even more blessed.

The biggest problem we have is that the crew is still mixing cement, and that takes water, lots of water, and in the next two weeks, when we start pouring the terrazza we will need even more.

Imagine this, my Honduran Macho Man was carrying a bucket of water in one hand, and a Coleman lantern in the other, muttering, "There is no water.  There is no electricity.  What I am doing in Honduras?'.

http://www.allianceforwaterefficiency.org/Residential_Shower_Introduction.aspx
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_water_is_wasted_brushing_teeth

We Have Water Restrictions

As of today, we are on water restrictions.  My friends in the US think water restrictions mean don't water the grass.  Water restrictions here mean we have no water, except at certain times of the day.  For now we have water from 6 AM - 10 AM and again from 2 PM - 7 PM.  This could change.  I have seen it when there was water from 7 AM to 10 AM   then from 7 PM to 10 PM on alternate days.  I have to plan my day carefully, so I have water to cook, wash clothes and do dishes.  Macho Man has to get his bath early.

My friends in  other parts of the country have been fighting torrential rains and flooding recently.  In Colon we have had no appreciable amount of rain since maybe June, when a couple of tropical storms blew through.  I have commented several times that the North Coast gets 144 inches a year, so it seams unreasonable that our river would run dry, but it is drying up.  We only have rain during the rainy seasons, and then it can rain up to 12" of rian per hour.  During the dry season it is exactly that, dry, except for the humidity. 

 In general, the rainy season in Honduras runs from May to November in the interior and from September to January along the north coast and Bay Islands (with a chance of severe storms any time of the year).

Hurricane Season is from August to November; direct hits are uncommon, but are devastating when they do come.  Remember Hurricane Mitch.  It stood off the Bay Islands for four or five days and did millions of dollars in damage, and took any lives, even on the mainland.

I wish I had known about the water restrictions earlier today.  We haven't had water except occasionally for the last two weeks.  It means we keep 5 gallon buckets of water in the bathrooms and one bucket in the kitchen for the dishes.  It means sometimes a quick shower and sometimes no baths at all, just using baby wipes.  Certainly, there has been no hair washed in several days.  Anyway, today about 9:45, I noticed we had water, and good water pressure, so I decided to  get in the shower, take a bath, and do my hair while I had a chance.  

I lathered up twice, rinsed, and applied the conditioner, and the water went kaput.  It is now 4 PM, the water is on, but just as I started up stairs about 2:15 PM, the woman who cleans for me came,  so I still have conditioner in my hair.  Oh well,  my hair needed a deep conditioning anyway.   

We usually sit on the balcony and enjoy the view from about 5:30 PM to about 7 PM.  Now we will have to eat and wash dishes during that time, so we will have to sit on the balcony during the late evening hours.  At night we can see the lights from the village of Rio Negro, the stars, and occasionally a cruise ship or a container ship with lights blazing, so we still have a view.  

We have a roof over our heads, and even though there is no glass in our windows, we won't get too wet. We cook with propane, so we won't go hungry. We buy water by the five gallon jug and we have three jugs, so we won't be thirsty. The bedroom will stay dry, unless there is a lot of wind, so we will be able to sleep comfortably. We have Coleman lanterns, so we will be able to see at night.

Ironically, there is a big rainstorm coming down the mountain even as I type.  It won't mean an end to the water restrictions, unless it rains 24 hours a day for several days.  Then the people along the rivers and in the mountains have to watch for flash floods and  mudslides.  Sometimes the bridges get washed away by the torrents of water coming down off the mountains.  That means Trujillo is cut off from the rest of Honduras.

We are blessed.

Another Trip to La Ceiba

We made a quick trip to La Ceiba last week that wasn't that quite as quick as we expected.  Macho Man and Chico both needed to see their doctor, and Chico needed a spa day because he was having multiple bad hair days.  I had to renew my green card.

As usual, we stayed at the Hotel Paris in downtown La Ceiba.  As usual, their staff was wonderful and very attentive.  The room was comfortable and we were able to walk to most of the places we wanted to see.  We also found a restaurant down on the beach, El Asador, where the menu was limited to four large entrees and several side orders and fast food items.  The food and the service was very good.  We will go back.

Macho Man had two full days of tests and doctor visits, and other than a minor infection seems to be in good health. We have to go back in two weeks for followup, after a course of antibiotics.

Chico got a clean bill of health; a good haircut and a pedicure, plus had a two night sleepover.

My trip to Immigration was quick, about 20 minutes, and not so bad.  The man in charge was very knowledgeable and efficient.  He stayed late through part of his lunch break, to get us taken care of.  That includes Juan having to walk two blocks to the bank to pay the fees.  You don't pay for anything in Honduras at the place you owe it, you get a ticket to show how much you owe; you go to the bank and pay it; then you go back and give the official the receipt saying it is paid.  He then gives you whatever document  you applied for.

On the advice of several friends I found two fabric shops within half a block of the hotel. Only in Honduras, but fabrics and sewing notions are not sold in the same place.  We were directed to a shop that supposedly had thread, needles, etc.  Ha!  it did have about 4 spools of thread in the primary colors, but nothing to match the material I was looking at.  No zippers, some bobbins, but not in the size I need, etc, etc, so next trip I will have to look again. 

On the way home we stopped at our friend, Dan's, beach house.  It is to die for.  What a view and what a beautiful, well arranged, comfortable home.  Oh, and what a view.  Just ocean as far as you can see, and almost deserted beach.  They only have three or four neighbors.  Dan and his wife are good people.  And we got a lot of new ideas for our house, like AC in all the bedrooms, and electrical outlets in the floor in the living room, to give more options for arranging furniture..

I will have more pictures of the construction next week I hope.  I am so ready for the second story to start taking shape.