Good byes are difficult

We had a day filled with good byes because we will not return to our 'regular' places of work again.  So, both in the morning and in the afternoon we were saying good'bye to both the children we met and the teachers and caretakers who work with them all the time.  While we delight in the fact that we had a chance to meet these folks, our hearts weep at having to leave them.  Even though we have only known them for five days, they welcomed us into their lives in ways that made us love them so it's hard to leave them.  At the same time, they will always be with us in memory.

Tomorrow we go to the campesino, a community that was washed out in 1997 when Hurricane Mitch came through Honduras.  They just received some land from the government about 4 or 5 years ago, so they are doing pretty well at building a town out of a field.   (Here in Honduras, a town is less a 'place' than it is a group of people, so they stayed together in hopes of finding a place to put their town.   Their waiting succeeded, but it took a lot of time.)  They hope to build another bathroom and work on putting gutters on their main street, street being a definite euphanism for a small 'track' through the little town of shacks. Some other organizations have come and built a church for them and built some of the houses, so right now the town is a combination of shacks made of collected materials, a church, a school which the government built and some cute little one or two room cinder block houses that this other organization has constructed.  Of course, even these more stable houses still have dirt floors and no screens or anything, but they are a big step up from houses made from the truncks of saplings put up like a stockade around a Revolutionary War fort.  They have some kitchen gardens in the back of the town and the Saint Rose group from last year was able to get a grant for $8000 to purchase a field for them last year because though they had room for their town, they had no room for farming.  As a farming community that really didn't make sense.  Now, at least, they have some room to farm, so we may be helping them to clear that field and get it ready for the banana trees they hope to grow.  Since bananas and plantains are a staple of the diet here, that gives them a good chance at a successful farm. 

When we left New York, two weeks seemed like  a long time.  Now, it seems impossible that we have only three more days before we leave early Sunday morning to return to the states.

More tomorrow after we visit the little rural town of La Bomba.