good week of hard work.  we have a new employee, jay, who is hard of hearing.  he has deformed ears, and talks like someone who is deaf.  it is hard enough to understand spanish in general let alone spanish from someone with a speaking disability.  i barely understand anything he says all day but we have a good time.  he is a really earnest worker though, it has been a blessing.  it is great the comraderie that develops when working hard with someone.  so even though we don´t really communicate verbally so much, we communicate in deed, which is better anyway.  we put in a 10 hour day on monday digging/building terraces in my neighbors yard.  it is very satisfying work because you know that it will improve life for people for decades, maybe even generations.  there were so many rocks in the dirt that we were able to build a stone retaining wall on the first terrace so far.  it is amazing, the rock is almost exactly the same as granite from cape ann  (massachusetts).  it is the same type of rock I am familiar working with at my landscaping job back home, so I felt a little nastolgic thinking about my wonderful former coworkers and all the granite we wrestled with in yesteryear.

yesterday i had an opportunity to give a few tours of our garden.  while I was showing our neighbor sharon our tropical spìnach patch, the dog came and what looked like sat down right on the spinach between us.  the dog then kind of still sitting slid down across a few spinach plants wiping her butt on the ground.  sharon, a nurse, says they do that when they have worms because the worms crawl out of the dogs butt and it itches, so the dog scratch it across the ground or across our spinach.  all that to say, make sure you wash your garden greens before you eat them.

A lot has happened the past two weeks.  I haven´t made it to town since my last entry thus i have not had access to internet.  but here we go as best i can remember:

 About two weeks ago on sunday i went on a wonderful hike in the forest up the mountain by our house.  I went back to a tree that i have a vision of building a tree house in.  last time i went there i was unable to climb it, but i did climb a smaller tree next to it.  this time i climbed up to the very top of the smaller tree, maybe about 40 feet high, being so thin, if you lean back and forth, it has a good sway at the top.  i was able to sway it about 6 feet over to the the bottom limb of the bigger tree (whose trunk is about 4 foot diameter).  I cast a rope around the bigger tree and tied the smaller to it, so that i may step off the top branch of the smaller to the bottom of the bigger.  the problem was,  there was a giant nest of termites in the bottom crotch of the big tree, through which the rope was thrown, so while i struggled to tie it off and ascend the bigger tree, i was swarmed by flying termintes, getting in my hair and face.  they don´t sting though, yes!  so negotiating vines, different races of ants, and giant orchids, i reached the top of the big tree, probably about 100 or 120 feet high.  the highest i have ever climbed in a tree.  i rested in the saddle of the top branchs for a break from the exhausiting climb and viewed the mountainous rainforest from above.  i was well above most trees.  unfortunately my ecstacy didn´t last long as i was swarmed by more bugs, bugs of all sorts.  i was hoping that that high there wouldn´t be bugs.  oh well.  the branches at the top make on okay formation for a tree house but not ideal, so im a little bummed about that, im not sure what i am going to do yet.  at least i don´t have to worry about too many humans getting up there.  I climbed down and hiked up a creek, where there were much fewer bugs, and found a nice waterfall for a refreshing swim.

 Larry and Allison would be out of town this week hosting a work team from Minnisota that was working up in La Muralla on the latrine project.  so i had the week to myself back at campus in Las Mangas.

 the next day monday, was good.  Duani, the alledged theif, came to work.  and we had a wonderful day of work.  we did some erosion control work with green barriers, and did some mulchbeds with bamboo leaves.  then we started working on a little prayer room/orchid house that we are making out of the porch of larry´s old house that was destroyed by hurricane mitch in 1998.  i was looking forward to another day of work with the the apparently rehabilitating Duani.

The next morning, I found the screen ripped in the window of the kitchen, but it didn´t seem like anything was stolen.  a couple things were moved around, but nothing was gone.  it was so strange.  Duani did not show up to work.  confused i went on with my day, till i came across our little storage closet door ripped open below our library.  things were shuffled around but nothing seemed gone.  then i saw the window to the libray, some glass panes were gone, and sure enough they got in through the window and then ripped open the bolted door to the inner library, where the computers, books and other valuables are kept.  it was the most protected room on campus.  i went in and dvd players were there, and the computer and safe, it seemed that nothing was stolen, how strange.  Larry and Allsion were up in La Muralla, about a 40 minut hike, so i wasn´t sure what to do.  I saw a La Murallan, biking by, so I sent a note with him to give to larry.  I went down to El Naranjo, a nearby village, to try to find Duani.  His mom said that he went to Ceiba that morning.  The nearest police station is a half our drive up the valley.  so i recruited a german envirnmental volunteer from up the road to go with me to translate.  The cops don´t have a vehicle, so i had to drive them back to campus in our truck, so far, a full hour of driving.  they checked it out looked at everything and we didn´t really know what to do next, then larry came home all sweaty.  he looked and promptly realized that they had stolen Allisons laptop, and later we found they had also broken into her apartment and stole her camera.  All this happened while I was asleep!

 so us four went back to El Naranjo, Larry, the two cops and I, to try to find Duani, same thing, we talked to his mom.  she was very sad to see us coming with the police.  Duani has been in trouble before.  so i drove the police back to Yaruca, and the plan was to bring them back that evening, to catch Duani, as he wouldn´t expect them to come back the same day.  so that evening, i drove out again and brought them back and we headed to El Naranjo as it started to get dark.  Larry was back in La Murally, so it was just me and the Police, walking up the path to Duani´s house with the whole villiage watching.  I had no idea what to expect, my heart was pounding. 

we came to duani´s house, and his family was sitting out front.  it was so sad to see his mother´s face.  Duani was in the house.  All, the time, im wondering why i have to be in the middle of this whole arrest situation, all because the cops don´t have a car.  I kinda felt like Judas approaching my coworker with the police. 

we went in and Duani was asleep, or at least acting so.  the Cop pocked him with his club and he slowly sat up.  i shook his hand and said ¨hola Duani¨.  it was so weird.  he was completely complient, but seemed half dead, as they walking him out of the house and down the street, the villiage looking on.  i said ¨Duani, bad things happened last night.¨ we got to the truck, the cops had me drive them back to yaruca to put duani in jail for investigation.  On the way up, we stopped for the cops to talk to some soldiers, and it was just me an duani sitting in the car.  mostly silence.  Don Chombo, one of the La Muralla farmers came to the car to say hi, and he asked what was up.  I told him that we got robbed last night.  He asked if we knew who it was.  all the time Duani in the back seat listening.  I said, we weren´t sure who it was but that we have Duani here for investigation.  Chombo looked back at Duani a little suprised and embrassed and said okay!  adios! 

i dropped them off at the police station and told the cop that we only want justice, nothing more, because sometimes they can be cruel to those in jail. 

Exhaused, I drove back to Las Mangas, now 4 hours of driving that day.  I arrived at home to see Dona Maria, a woman who works for us and who was staying with us that week, with her family, and there was another man, who seemed pretty upset. 

 i got out of the truck and the man started going off about how enough is enough.  demasiado!  he kept saying.  he listed off all the things Duani has stolen from Larry in the past and said that Larry is just letting himslf get stepped on.  enough!  he said, then he pulled out a gun from his belt and said something about Duani that I didn´t understand and pointed the gun at his own head.  He said demasiado! one more time and left. 

 I was pretty shaken up.  i don´t want anyone to get shot.  Dona Maria said that he is the one that protects us, and protects las Mangas.  I guess, a few years ago, some men came in a car for a revenge shooting, and they went to the wrong house, and they went to this man´s house, and as they opened fire, kids coincidentally had come running out.  they shot into the group of kids, one of dona Marias children died, and this man´s daughter lost her arm. 

besides all the chaos, our neighbor Sharon, had left a freshly baked loaf of bread on the Pila, right before I got home, it was wonderful.  I slept little that night. 

the next day there was a tremendous wind, and being depressed and exhaused, i did little work  in the morning.  Eventually I started working things out in my soul and was able to get to work, making a terrace in the Garden.  The winds continued to pick up, the atmoshphere had something fierce in store for us.  as it got dark the storm hit.  we hadn´t gotten good rain in about two months, an increadible drought, but now it was raining hard.  on the tin roof it sounded like a static channel on tv with the volume on full blast on a sweet sound system.  it was too lound to talk, you had to yell. 

all night thunder tore through the sky and lightning flashed and the wind howled.  It was so windy in my room that in the middle of the night, it blew the blanket right off my bed onto the floor.  it rained for a good two days.  I was scared. 

 I felt like so much pent up tension was released.  I know the plants loved it. 

Days passed and I heard nothing of Duani, until i found out that he had been released by the police.  he actually came to work tuesday morning, and we had a talk with him.  he was mad at us for taking the police to him.  he said they beat him up and poured water on him at night to get him to confess, but he never did.  He said he didn´t want to work for larry but the only reason he was was because he owed him money.  so larry said then don´t work for me, work for someone else and pay me back. 

i tried to explain to him that whether or not he did the crime, everyone in the community thinks he did, and that they want to kill him.  it was for his good that we pursued legal action instead of what else may have happened.  we told him that if anything else happpens, it doesn´t matter who does it, the village will think it is him, and he will be in great danger.  so it would be to his benifit to do everything in his power to make sure that we do not get robbed again.

 Other than that whole fiasco, things have been going well.  I have been doing some terrace work for my neighbors, chris and sharon.  I work in their yard, and they give me fresh baked bread in exchange.  it is well worth it.  We also finished up planiting the surinam cherry trees, now that the drought has broken.  things are starting to get back on pace.  i am off my giardia antibiotics now too.  and today we are buying a juicer to try to start a little freshsqueezed orange juice business with the orphans we take care off, to raise money for them.  and i look forward to rob gifford coming in two weeks!

I had an amazing hike this weekend.  Another volunteer, Mac, and I went on a hike to a waterfall here in the valley.  It was a about a hour hike or so to the base of the water fall which is about 70 meters tall.  Then, feeling ambitious, we bushwacked our way to the top of the waterfall as there is no maintained trail.  The view from the top was stunning.  you could see much of the valley stretched out, and could see all the way to the beautiful carribean.  A great combonation of two of my favorite things, woods and ocean!  We decided to follow the stream further up the mountian just to see what was up there.  As we went we discovered a series of pools and waterfalls.  Three main waterfalls, about 70 to 100 feet tall forced take extreme measures to ascend them, including climbing rocks with the water dumping down on us.  At on point it seemed we could go no further as we were surrounded by cliffs and a dangerously slippery ascent near the waterfall, so we climbed a vine up a cliff.  the last section was a little scary as the cliff over hung the leadge, so it was a lot of upper body for the final stretch.  not knowing what was at the top, we made out way to yet another beautiful mini canyon, and gorgeous waterfall.  It was increadable.  Every waterfall we discover was seemingly more beautiful that the last.  We described it as getting a new album from a band you like, and the first song is awesome.  So you think, well, good first song.  then you hear the next song and its just as awesome, if not better!  then every song is like that on the album!  And who knows how many more there are beyond.  And all these waterfalls are set in the context of virgin rainforest.  We got a little off track on the way down, and ended up sliding down some serious steep land.  It was like embracing a mini avalance of rocks and dirt as you slide down almost 40 feet with a flood of tumbling rocks always on the brink of being out of control.  Poor Mac, once he stopped at the end, a small rock came tumbling and hit him on the bone of his ankle, which proceeded to bleed alot.  By the time we got home, his Chaco was pooled with blood, it was even puddling on the floor of the bus on the way home.  yuck!  it seems to be okay though.  As we got back on the trail finally, after a few landslide adventures, and meticulously negotiating steep declines and thorny jungle plants.  We made it back to the trail.  Yes!  Filled with joy, we ran most of the way down back to the road.  The feeling was amazing, cruizing down the windy and steep trail, feeling like the surrounding forest was like an audience cheering us on.  I felt like I entered a true state of worship as I haven´t felt for a while.   After all the amazing beautiful and wonderful things that happened, it was hard to explain what I had just experienced, upon returning home and being asked how the hike was.  Amazing!

 Unfortunatly, that night, I got sick and have been for the past few days, some stomach thing.  A nurse here thinks that it may be giardia, but im not sure.  I was supposed to bring a stool sample in to town to get tested for parasites or whatever today but I forgot.  uggh.

work down here has been shifting into high gear.  i have been doing hard work clearing land for a fruit tree grove that we are planning in Las Mangas.  Im thankful to have this day in town to rest from the work so the blisters on my hand from machete work can heal a bit.  work is hard.  the sun is hot, the bugs are hungry the foliage often thorny and sharp, and the machete blade feels especially sharp when it slices your hand while sharpening it.  slowly but surly im getting into campasino shape.  hiking the trails in La Muralla dont tire me as much, and the heat seems a bit more tolerable. 

 We have also been working on a latrine project in La Muralla lately, pouring slabs to cover the latrine holes that they have dug.  we visited this one home, that last one out in La Muralla, and it was a 2 hour hike, from the road.  these people are the real deal.  they served us luch, and with the rice and tortillas was the meat from an animal that the sons had hunted the night before.  it was very yummy.  i think it was in the rodent family, like some sort of giant jungle rat or something. 

 An interesting twist from this week:  this 17 year kid down here who Larry has known for years has been getting into trouble.  he has gotten into drugs and has been stealing alot.  he stole many personal possesions from some of the Gordon students that were down here in January.  He is a known theif having also stolen from one of the eco-tourist lodges near by.  around here, there is not much law, so when someone gains a reputation as his, it is not uncommon to find him some morning dead.   a means the community takes to defend itself.  the word was out that this kid will be shot soon, unless something changes.

This kid´s cousin, Manual works for larry, who i work with daily also.  Manuel supposedly had a talk with the thief, and told him that he shouldnt steal, that if he wants money, he should just ask Larry for work instead of stealing from him.  sure enough, to all our disbelief, after talking to Larry, he showed up to work monday morning, and has been working all week.  he has been a good worker too!  so now, if he does die, we won´t just lose a thief, we will lose a worker.  but since he´s working now, it seems that his life will be spared a bit longer. 

The notable event this week was the start of the planting of about 150 surinam cherry fruit trees.  Surinam cherries are like little red pumpkins about an inch across that are quite sweet.  we will be using them to make jam.  we planted them along a long mountain ridge on Larry´s land.  They are planted up the ridge in two rows, lining a path that will be a meter wide when the trees are full grown.  the path extends about 400 meters up the mountain.  it is good to plant tree crops on the ridges as they face the most erosion, it is where it starts.  Tree crops hold the soil well and soften the fierce rain that would normally pound the precious soil.  planting them along a lane makes it easier for harvesting, a creates a pleasant path up the mountainside. 

I am slowly familiarizing myself with the land.  There is Finca Shalom, which is Larry´s demo farm in La Muralla (about a 40 minute hike from where I am staying), then there is campus, in Las Mangas where we live.  Campus is about an acre of riverside property.  the view from campus is illustrated by the title photo of this blog.  La Muralla is on the other side and to the left of the ridge, depicted in the photo.  At the Las Mangas campus, which we call campus we have some fruit trees and vegitable gardens.  We are in the process of building a fish pond for yummy fish.  We live communally at campus, all pooling our resources in ragards to food and other needs.  We share meals together daily and fulfill daily chores.  I share a room with Larry and Joel.  Joel is a friend of Larry´s who was basically abondonded by his parents.  He is I think 29 years old and is mentally retarded and has epilepsy.  Campus adopted him and tought him to collect plastic bottles to redeem for money, or we also use them in the nursury for our little trees.  Campus also hosts orphans weekly for games and learning, and also youth groups for the same purpose.   Adjacent to campus a a property that extends up the mountian side containing a watershed the supplies clean drinking water to Las Mangas and a near by village El Naranjo.  This property is owned by Jack Dire, the founder of the program down here. 

 I spend my time working on campus and at Finca Shalom (in La Muralla), hiking through the woods, reading and studying, and slowly learning spanish. 

 The pace of life is refreshingly simple.  I have only cut myself once with my machete, right under my finger nail.  ouch.  The bugs are still bad, but I am getting used to them. 

I look forward to more loyally report on this blog, so thank you for your patience.  I will hopefully access it once a week.

This is my first post since I`ve been in honduras.  I have little access to the internet, the site was down for a while, and I forgot my password for the past two weeks but it just came to my head a couple days ago.  yes! 

 It has been great down here.  getting this blog going is an example of the different pace of life.  things probably go at a quarter or an eighth the speed they do up in new england.  which is good as it has provided much time for thinking.  A group from Gordon College came down last week on a sustainable tropical agriculture intensive which was fun.  we worked on a latrine project in La Muralla, the subsistance farming community in which I am working.  we helped dig 8 foot deep holes for the latrines.  this community has never had toilets. 

I know there is much to catch up on, but sort of not too much because everything happens slowly.  up where I live, near La Muralla, in Las Mangas, we have no phone so communication happens verly slowly.  The one thing that happens quickly is the accumilation of bug bites.  Lots of ticks and gnats.  These ticks are tiny, they get in your belt line and they are so hard to see, they can chomp away for days.  then you have all these red itchy bumps, dozens of them. 

I bought my machete last week.  So now Im beginning to feel like a real man.  We eat a lot of beans and rice.  almost every day.  it is yummy though with some veggies mixed in.   I will now be updating this more frequently, hopefully weekly now that I remembered my password.  peace!

On my way down to the Honduras, I have a 5 day layover in Key Largo Florida where I am visiting with my Dad and his wife’s family at an exlusive gated community, Ocean Reef Club. It is will be quite a striking contrast between the affluence and comfort of this community and the poverty and struggle of the campasino (farmer) community in which I will soon be living and working. Although it is difficult to reconcile the ease and excess I now experience here and siplicity and rigor of The Rio Cangrejal (the river I will be living along), I consider this time an opportunity to view the full spectrum of human expereience. Here at Ocean Reef Club there are no financial worries, there are merecedes modeled golf carts to carry you to the beach, there are no mosquitos as the perimeter is constantly sprayed with bug repellent, there is a fleet of massive yachts lined up, each seemingly bigger and more luxurious than the last. There is no cash, you can only use your ocean reef card to pay for anything including ten dollar plates of chicken tenders.

By whatever circumstances this is the world we live in. For whatever reason some posses incredible wealth, but most do not. I have observed though, that despite this discrpancy of material possession, I have not found such a comparable gulf in happiness. Im not sure that the folks here at ‘the Reef’ are all that much happier than the simple folks of Honduras. From what I hear, happiness is correlated to material possision to an extent, in accordance with basic needs being met, but as wealth increases beyond that happiness does not necissarily increase also.

What are the qualities of life that truly affect satisfaction and fulfillment? I would wager that the real things that bring happiness do not require a membership card or even a house.

Bryan Dunigan helped me set up this blog. I am excited to record my experiences in Honduras the next 8 months. I leave the Northshore of Massachusetts December 28 and will be in Florida for about 5 days, then, January 3 I will arrive in La Ceiba Honduras to begin my journey in seeking a better way.