Hey Folks

Lots of good comments on the last blog, I will be sure to blog every time I have a near death experience or destroy something. Sorry for the long delay in posting another blog. I will try and post some pictures in this blog as well if the computer will cooperate today. Not much new going on here. Last week was the national corn festival here in Danlí (Festinama 2007 it was called). It is sort of like the state fair of Honduras with lots of vendors selling all sorts of things made mostly from corn. Corn is a big deal here, they grow mostly white corn which is similar to the dent corn we have at home but lighter in color with a very similar looking plant an ear size. Most everyone in the campo here grows at least some corn, mostly on a subsistence basis, meaning they grow enough to eat throughout the year or more often enough to sell at a low price at harvest and then buy back enough to eat during the year at a higher price (storage is a problem). Most corn in the diet is eaten in the form of corn tortillas made by hand every morning. Corn grows quite well here and is a thing of pride among the Hondurans. I need to look it up to make certain, but I am pretty sure that Honduras can’t grow enough corn to feed itself and has to import in order to feed the population. That is a pretty telling statistic I think since the majority of the population subsists on corn, rice and beans.

Anyhow the corn festival was pretty fun some other volunteers came into town to enjoy the food and beer and we walked around town enjoying the festival. Below are some pics from Saturday the main day of the festival.

Annie enjoying some corn products - elote is the grilled field corn you see below and montuca (sp?) is what she´s eating in the pic above. It´s a tamale like thing filled with pork or chicken, bits of potato, and a few other veggies like peas then wrapped in corn husks and boiled. They´re much drier than the Mexican tamales we´re used to.

Food stands set up around a plaza...it got a bit smoking with all the fires. In the big pots they´re boiling the Honduran tamales (just cooked corn mass) and montucas.

It´s a GYR

Feels like the county fair!

Streets of Danli before Festinama 2007 kicked off its carnival

The following pics are from the parade Sunday morning, the final day of the week-long festival. The first pick is a float with the ¨corn queen¨.

Right now Annie is in La Esperanza at a HIV-AIDS conference and I am at home. I went with a PAM (Protected Areas Management) volunteer to his site earlier this week to meet with his community about helping them with the initial survey they need to do to bring electricity to the community. Hopefully we will be able to do the preliminary study of the community for free (it costs about $1500-3000 to hire someone to do it, way out of reach of this community) or at least for minimal costs in transportation and some equipment. After the initial study is done the community can then look for someone to pay to put the electricity lines in (Church group from the states, NGO, or some other donor). And maybe in 4 or 5 years have T.V. and refrigeration.

OK until later

Que le vaya bien

Luke