Monthly Archives: October 2014

El Chircal

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These ancient Lenca artifacts were recovered from an abandoned site known as El Chircal Zona Arqueológica near the colonia of Yarumela, La Paz, La Paz near where I live. They are in a private collection and were acquired many decades ago. Families have handed down the ancient treasures over generations. The artifacts are more than 3,000 years old, perhaps older. When the Maya Empire reached its southern expansion at Copán in northwestern Honduras, the Lenca were the dominant population group at numerous sites in what is now Honduras. They became trading partners. I will be researching El Chircal further in the days ahead to help formulate a development plan for further organized exploration.

So Many Students

La Paz is a municipalidad of 40 to 50,000 inhabitants and is the administrative seat of the departamento of La Paz. Working at my computer I look out my window and see students daily making their way to class. La Paz has a half dozen or so public escuelas (primary schools) and one public colegio or instituto (secondary school).  The students walk by laughing and talking in their universal blue and white uniforms: white blouse and dark-blue skirt for girls and white shirt and dark-blue trousers for the boys. The public school students have three different jornadas (periods), AM, PM, and night so that there are students walking by all day and evening. Then there are three private bilingual schools with their own different colored uniforms, and a private evangelical school, and a private catholic school and colegio with their uniforms. There is also the police academy, an instituto with 500 students and their unique different uniforms, and a normal school that produces primary school teachers who wear uniforms of yellow blouses and dark brown skirts to class. A few kilometers out of town there is an instituto that teaches agricultural skills and animal husbandry to students from all over the country. And in the colonia of Yarumela, a suburb of La Paz, there is the Instituto Polyvalente that teaches construction skills like metalwork, carpentry, plumbing and electricians. A private school for Nursing Assistants also adds to the mix. On weekends people from aldeas in the surrounding mountains, buyers and sellers, crowd into the city’s vast open-air street market where every imaginable item is bought and sold. The market two blocks from my home, I often walk over to rub elbows with these wonderful folks.

Driving Sister Edith

When I returned from my trip to the North Coast Sister Edith told me she had started driving the Chevy pickup truck I donated to the Foundation. For the past several months she and I had gone out on sporadic weekly driving lesson trips in a rural part of town. While I was gone her brother and a family friend convinced her she was ready to solo. She is now the proud driver of a 1989 Chevy Silverado Stepsider pickup truck and daily and gaily transports the children to school and to church. I had been driving her and the children around but now my services are no longer necessary. She, however, does not yet have a driver’s license. So next week Sister Edith and I will drive to nearby Comayagua to obtain her license and she thereby becomes legal. How soon they become independent.