Today, Christmas Eve, I took the two boxes of clothing donated by my daughter Andrea and her co-workers Pam Schorman and Jennie Lorenz who work at Seattle Genetics to the orphanage.  I arrived in the morning to give my usual twice a week English class to the three oldest children.  Afterward, while the nacatamales were cooking, I transplanted some tomato seedlings into the garden.  After all the children ate, we opened the two boxes of clothing.  Everyone received clean wearable items including one each for Sister Edith’s mom and dad and her twin sisters.  Tonight my host family is hosting a birthday/Christmas dinner for the husband of the house, Fredy, with the Cuban doctors as guests who are cooking a traditional Cuban dish called Congri.  As well as nacatamales, of course.  Tomorrow, Christmas Day, I will return to the orfanato in the evening to watch a Christmas movie with the kids.  I cannot express the feelings I have in my heart for having been welcomed into the bosom of these wonderful Honduran folk who have unconditionally accepted me into their lives.

I have to separate the holiday gatherings in order to differentiate the donors and participants.  Last night, the 23rd, Reggie, my Peace Corps Volunteer friend posted to Cane, a small aldea about 20 minutes from La Paz, brought her two children to the Fundacion Senor San Jose with gifts from the states.  They had flown in that day arriving at 1PM to Tegucigalpa’s Toncontin airport.  Reed and Devlin, tired as they were, joined right in and distributed the presents to the eager children who had been waiting for them.  Many thanks to the children of the Vail Mountain School in Colorado who bought the gifts and sent short notes written in Spanish to each child residing at the orfanato.  And a big thank you to the teachers who surprised Sister Edith with the digital camera for which she had been praying. 

I was invited to a Christmas party last Saturday the 19th where a couple of dozen of my Honduran friends and I ate and danced and drank the night away.  And I forgot my camera!  From the bottom right corner in the pictures above can be seen how my host family goes all out to decorate their home for the holidays.  After I took these pics I walked over to another Christmas party that our hospital volunteer support group hosted Tuesday the 22nd at this really nice little restaurant right next door to an apartment where I will be moving on January 1st, 2010.  Finally, my own two-bedroom place to call home.  Tonight I go to another Christmas party at the Fundacion Senor San Jose to help distribute gifts brought by a Peace Corps friend of mine’s family from Vail, Colorado and tomorrow the 24th to yet another Christmas gathering at the orphanage to eat nacatamales and distribute gifts sent by my daughter Andrea and her co-workers Pam Schorman and Jennie Lorenz from Seattle Genetics in Bothell, Washington.  Bless all these wonderful persons for their generosity and goodness of heart.

The Saturday after I returned from Tela to La Paz I was scheduled to play in a futbol (soccer)  game.  The hospital volunteer group I belong to meets every two weeks and we had been planning the game for a couple of months to raise money to help renovate  the hospital’s birthing center.  Sixty players poneyed up L500 each to buy uniforms at cost.  Most of the players were doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers and other professionals.  And me, except I couldn’t play because of my painful foot.  So I asked Sulma, at 13 years old one of the oldest girls at the Fundacion Senor San Jose, to play in my place.  So along with her 10 y.o. brother Marvin, and 10 y.o. Leroy, off we went Saturday afternoon to the Police Academy soccer field.  The original idea was to have the 3 alternate playing times, Sulma first.  When she put on the uniform she moaned and complained that my uniform was too baggy for her, that she looked terrible, and she insisted that she did not want to go out onto the field.  I told her she looked great and pointed out a couple of other girls already working out.  Reluctantly she went out and began participating.  To make a long story short, when it came to the boys’ turns to go out and play she refused to relinquish the uniform, she had made friends and happily played the entire game, the boys moaning and complaining all the way home.  We lost: 5-2.

What a  crown jewel of the caribbean is this small city nestled at the edge of the sea.  Tela was chosen to host our PVVA taller (Personas Viviendo con VIH/SIDA) and an excellent choice it was with the sound of waves breaking in the background every moment we were there.  Our three-day Peace Corps-sponsored workshop attracted folks from all over Honduras who are involved in the world of HIV/AIDS.  Members of my team included two from Jovenes Sin Fronteras in La Paz and two from Jovenes Sin Fronteras from my former site of La Masica.  It was like old home week renewing friendships with Peace Corps Volunteers and contrapartes from all over the country.  Besides all our well-planned classroom activities we were taken on a field trip to a natural forest called Lancetilla that is the second largest natural botanical reserve in the world, the largest being in Malaysia.  A truly remarkable collection of forest species from all over the planet.  On our way home our team stopped off at Lago Yojoa for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the lake, Honduras’ largest.

In the mountains, nine kilometers above the city of Siguatepeque, is a wonderful organic farm called CEASO (Centro de Ensenanza y Agricultura Sostenible) that offers classes in organic farming methods and that next year has been certified to offer a bachillerato diploma as a secondary instituto educational facility, the only one in the country.  I took the nun and the orfanato’s seven oldest children there today to learn the principles of self-sustaining gardening in a half-day session whose results went beyond my wildest expectations.  The kids, captivated, learned about organic ecological methodology and about the importance of chemical-free food products they can raise themselves.  Their prayers to Don Rene Santos Aguilar, the director of this marvelous place, at lunchtime thanking him for his presentation brought tears to my eyes.  Please follow our journey from the bottom right pictures until our departure.

Tomorrow is election day in Honduras.  A new president will be chosen for a single four-year term.  The current presidencial term continues in peaceful turmoil with a usurper in power and the legal president a virtual prisoner in the Brazilian embassy.  We here at the orphanage are more interested in the real lessons of life: a chicken pen sturdy enough to hold the chickens in check so that we can plant a garden; growing food for the table.  The Saturday after Thanksgiving Day we can see the new bean sprouts rising from the soil in the little garden visible in the top left picture.  In the large open patio where we’re standing in the two bottom right pics we’re surrounded by new little corn seedlings sprouting all around us.  The rocks you see in the large pile to the left of Sulma in the top second right pic were removed by hand day after day, everyone helping in our quest for self sufficiency: we’re still clearing out rocks.  I could only spend a couple of hours working today.  Because of the election all PCVs are restricted to our homes from noon today until Monday noon.  Next Saturday I’m taking the six oldest children and the nun to a hands-on educational organic farm above Siguatepeque so that they might see and learn how they can develop the space where they live.

“This Thanksgiving feast is happening at the orphanage because one day while we, the kids the nun and I, were working digging up rocks and planning our garden Sister Edith asked me when our Dia de Gracias was held (there is no Day of Gracias celebration in Honduras).  Looking up I told her it was on the last Thursday of November.  This was in October.  She told me: “I would like to cook a turkey.”  I asked her if she had ever cooked a turkey before.  She replied “no.”  But she liked the idea of a day of thanks and wanted to learn.  I asked my PCV companera Regina if she could teach the nun how to cook a turkey: my cooking skills are limited to meat loaf and jello-type dishes.  The rest is history.  I would like to ask everyone to try and forget about the materialistic throw-away society from which we are temporarily absent and concentrate on the goodness of folk who put the welfare of those more unfortunate than ourselves at the forefront.  Dollars are a fleeting solace, the spirit of human kindness lasts forever.  Thank you for wanting to participate in the very first Thanksgiving dinner with the Fundacion Senor San Jose’s children of the orphanage who have never tasted turkey before, and who daily ask me what turkey tastes like.”  I sent this email to the ten PCVs who elected to join in our celebration.  The kitchen in the bottom right was provided to us by a friend who lives across the street from the orphanage.  We then transported all the food (three turkeys with all the fixings) and after a prayer from Sister Edith we fed the children first.  This Thanksgiving Day the spirit of the occasion rose in all of us as we joined in a blessed event eternally grateful to be allowed to share bread together in thanks.

The days have been busy and my foot is healing, slowly but surely.  Our chicken pen at the orphange is nearing completion.  School classes are out for the winter until February.  I am, however, giving private English language lessons to three other groups, which keeps me busy four days of the week.  Tomorrow, Wednesday, I leave for another medical brigada high in the mountains above the city of Comayagua at an aldea called Valle Bonito.  Truly a beautiful place; I have been there before.  Two weeks ago I was with a brigada at another mountain aldea organized by an entirely Honduran medical team and we attended to 415 medical patients and 80 dental patients that day.  Next week I have a four-day workshop in Choluteca, Honduras’ southernmost departamento noted for its hot weather and the following week I have a return appt with my orthopedist in Tegucigalpa.  I finally received my new replacement camera from the states, sent by my wonderful daughter Andrea: now I have to figure out how to use the dang thing.  Finally, my own pictures to accompany the narrative.  Just in time to record our Thanksgiving dinner at the orphanage.  Truly something for which to be thankful.

From the top of El Picacho one has a panoramic view of Honduras’ largest city: the capital.  Atop the mountaintop park overlooking the congestion below stands a towering 30-meter statue of christian religious symbolism with arms outstretched at its sides gazing out over its flock below; the country is 90% or so roman catholic.  There also exists a sizable and growing protestant evangelical community as well as tiny muslim and jewish populations.  I first arrived in town on October 6th because I had developed a sharp burning pain under my right heel a few days after my mountain climbing sojourn above Comayagua.  When I called the Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO) she scheduled me an appt with an orthopedist who subsequently diagnosed Plantar Fascitis.  It hurts like hell.  After having been measured for made-to-order shoe inserts I returned to see him on the 22nd with no noticable improvement.  The doc gave me the inserts, told me to continue my treatment and added that it could take weeks, or months, to return to normal.  He made me an appt to see him again in a month.  Meanwhile I’m hobbling around La Paz breaking in my new inserts, taking pain medicine, and wishing I hadn’t climbed that damn mountain.