Interesting Update

Many updates since last time, I’ll write in bullets to keep everything organized because my mind is always scattered thinking...

- To scare my family even more, right after I wrote about the bridge, our car got rear ended in traffic. To keep it brief, we had to pay the guy around $20 because apparently it was our fault. Actually I was asleep in the backseat only to be awaken by screeching of tires and a thud on the back of the car when we got hit, so I don’t really know whose fault it was, but fortunately, there was only a small dent in our car so it wasn’t a big deal.

- Then after getting hit, we were climbing a hill, and it turns out that our engine mounts weren´t too good (or maybe it was because we were loaded with luggage) because a mount broke and our engine shook a lot every time we accelerated.

- With a broken engine mount, we decided to drive back and on the way in the dusk to return the car and on the main highway, there was a huge gaping whole in the side of the highway because of the excessive rain, we had to swerve into the other lane to miss driving into this hole and what would have been off the edge of the mountain. Maybe I shouldn’t mention the other car that was flipped over by this hole that I helped with 15 Hondurans to turn back over. Well, if I mention that, I should say the driver and all passengers were unharmed. But I won’t mention anything about that car.

- To note, this was all before the official start date of Amigos, during amigos, we can’t drive cars and there are other rules to keep up out of danger.

- Currently, there is also a Coup de estat and all the power is out, so my computer will die soon. Apparently, the president Zelayah wants to be a communist dictator, and the state is against that, so he may not be president for much longer (after today).

- Enough of the fun stuff.

- Communities here are wonderful and so generous. I have 4, one in the mountain bout 300 people with no electricity, one about 1000 people, a capital of the municipality, two communities around 600 half with electricity half not.

- Their main business is agriculture, they plant, groom, fertilize, harvest, dry and grind coffee beans. That is their main source of income, hard laborious work. Then they finish all the hard labor and sell the beans at 5 American cents a pound. They usually sell them by the 100 pound bushels, and the harvest (and selling) season is only from October, November and December. During this time they have to save money for the whole year, but they also grow their own beans, besides cell phone minutes, water and clothes, they need money to buy maiz, which is corn because not too many people grow that because coffee beans yields so much more money since it is eventually exported after all the middle men get their cuts. Maiz, therefore needs to be bought by most families, but prices are rising because rain has been less lately, so families have been loosing their crops.

- Another update, coup is over, new president has been signed in and there are rumours of cancelling the project in Honduras!!!! I hope not, that would be a big misfortune... Right now our project has a stand down, just like the Peace Corps in Honduras, so we are not allowed to tavel right now, we have to stay in today and see what happens, to be honest, I feel confident we will be off and running tomorrow because there doesn´t seem anything that has happened – except a travel advisory from the state department warning about travel to Honduras. I can say, I have survived a coup.