hn51.

So I decided that I don't feel like writing much, and thus, I will tell my story in pictures. Or at least, the parts of it I can tell in pictures.

They're all mixed, so just bear with it.

Pic 1: This is Rene, he's one of my garden project community leaders. He's standing next to a compost bin he built himself of his own volition. Kick ass.
This is part of Don Neto's garden. Everyone's work coming along just fine, so there are a couple of these garden pictures. It seems for the time being that I taught them well, at least some of it. The rest they knew already. In fact, maybe I didn't teach them anything at all...
Pic 3: Ok so this flower I thought was awesome, especially because of it's constant erection.
Pic 4: This is what that coffee that I picked looks like now. More or less. Mad dry and mad tasty :)
Pic 5: This is a tomato plant at Arturo's model garden. Only 3-4 weeks since transplant, and it's huge!!!
Pic 6: This is a refrigerator that was converted into a compost bin. Yeah that's right, take that recycling.
Pic 7: Beats. In a model garden. I don't know, I'm proud of them. Kind of like grandchildren almost...

Ok, that's it for now. Oh, wait, one story.

So I went to meet with one of the communities participating in the garden project. 25 families in this particular town had signed up, and I went to explain all the details of the project and to get them to sign participation contracts with 4 little rules. Well, we started talking and one woman asked me about the distribution of her garden, and whether or not she could put one of the rolls of fencing to use for something else. Now, the point is, every family gets one roll. So i asked her how it was that she figured that she would get two. And her response was that she had two families living in her house (her's and her daughter's), therefore she should get two. And it turned out, that many families had signed up as 2 or 3 in order to get more material. So 25 turned into 12, in about 30 seconds. I didn't know what to do. I had never seen this before, not in any of the other communities, and no other place was so daring as to try to illicit more than they were intitled to. So now I have some extra spots open, and I'm not worried about filling them, but I was shocked. And they were all clearly explained to at the beggining that it was 1 roll per household. Apparently to them, a daughter who gives birth at 16 and stays living at home is considered a separate household. Since when? And how come no one in any of the other communities with their 10 children ( and even grandchildren) per family thought so...

yeah, that's it. it may not seem like much to you guys, but i felt cheated. but hey, you live and you learn. now, i'll make sure to make those kinds of things much clearer for the future. :P

hn50.

Ok, so first and foremost, this is my 50th entry in Honduras. Or at least, I think so. Regardless, let's just get on with it. Life is awesome. For now, I think that's basically it. Just had my mid term visit, where my my PTS, or Program Training Specialist, AKA boss, came to check out my work. We ended up sitting in meetings the whole time, but it was an awesome time, lots of future work got planned, some strong working relationships were formed, and all-in-all, I think it went well.
Work-wise, things are going well, although currently very slowly. Proposals are awaiting approval, solar panels are coming in December, and the coffee season is slowing things down all over. But, it all comes as a blessing, since I'm definitely in need of a break, and I can use the time to get involved in other things, smaller but equally exciting projects, and in the end stay equally occupied but less stressed out.
Oh, and the coffee experiment is moving right along. Although I'm not sure how it will turn out, because it hasn't been really sunny these days, and the coffee is drying in the shade, which may damage the quality. I guess I won't know until it's all over anyway. Here are a few shots of the process.

hn49.

So I have decided to start a little experiment, and I think it should be interesting to see how it all pans out. I will make a cup of coffee from scratch, and I mean the scratchiest scratch. I will pick the coffee, dry it myself (se llama cafe melado), depulp it, roast it, grind it, and finally drink it. I thought this would be easy, but after starting yesterday, it seems it may be harder than I think. For two hours I picked coffee in my host dad's farm, and only picked enough for a third of a bucket, which is worth 10 Lempira, or about 50 cents. So 2 hours of work=50 cents. Pretty good for a university grad (one redeeming fact is that only a small portion of the coffee is ripe enough for pciking, which makes the process much longer). For now, its drying, so we'll see what happens. Here are some photos.

So, I will keep you guys updated with the progress of my beans. Let's see if I can make coffee. Maybe at the end I can even plant a few, making the cycle complete.