20. February 2012 by Fortunato Velasquez.

Life is not always peaches and cream, after all.  Two of the children at the orphanage lost their dad in the terrible Comayagua Prison fire Valentine´s Day night where 358 trapped prisoners suffered unimaginably horrible deaths.  Yet life does inevitably go on.  The nefarious bacteria and opportunistic viruses awaiting my Honduras arrival prove the point.  First it was the gripa (pronounced ´greepah´), a combined bronchitis, sinusitis, flu that lingered for days.  When I survived that onslaught, after self-medicating myself with 500 milligrams of TID Amoxicillin for a week, a particularly malignant intestinal strain of critter pounced for the kill: a fat gringo meal properly tenderized.  Following 4 days of stomach cramps, vomiting, muscle aches and diarrhea I think I may survive.  On a brighter note, two of the children will be reunited with their dad who was released from our local prison after a two-year sentence last week.  The 3-year-old sitting on my lap and his 5-year-old brother will be released to the 20-year-old father and 17-year-old mother to face an uncertain future.  The orphanage continues to move forward.  The pictures show an area being prepared for the sale of fast food.  Sister Edith is a genius at squeezing every last value out of a lempira and since the construction of our new building won´t be finished until the end of the year she intends to profit by the delay.  Friday we have an Asamblea General scheduled at which time a governing board will be elected for the management of the new Fundacion Senor San Jose and the subsequent new building that will have capacity for 32 children.  Saturday I leave for a brief 5-day vacation at La Ceiba on the Caribbean Coast.  I pray my gut will be sufficiently recuperated to enjoy the magnificent seafood.

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9. February 2012 by Fortunato Velasquez.

In the early morning hours a year ago today I sat on my front stoop in La Paz, my right arm dripping blood, waiting for an ambulance, to begin an 11-month odyssey that would take me from Comayagua to Tegucigalpa to Panama City and ultimately to Seattle.  I would be gone from Honduras for 11 months while that right arm sustained 7 surgeries to render me whole again.  Having fractured the ulna, radius and the humerus where they join at the elbow, the joint had to be reconstructed using a radial head prosthesis.  On January 23rd I left a Seattle snowstorm to arrive in tropical Honduras´ 75 degree weather and step seamlessly back into my previously interrupted life.  What a difference a year makes.

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