September 13, 2008

I have had a busy but good first week working with Diaconia Nacional. Doris, who lives next door, also works at Diaconia so we often ride together a couple miles to a nearby town called Santa Maria del Real where the office is located. This week I have been working with David Cruz on the environment/agriculture program. First we went to the tree nursery of the municipality and picked up a few loads of saplings to bring to a local high school that is doing some reforestation projects with Diaconia. In the past a lot of deforestation has happened in Honduras, especially in Olancho. The traditional way of cooking is using a woodstove, so firewood is in demand. Honduras is also known for its high quality timber such as mahogany. Some of the trees we supplied will be good for lumber in the future. David also has a nursery set up at Diaconia. He provides trees to farmers which will give a good return when they are sold as lumber in the future. In all we moved about 1000 little trees this week.



The high school we are working with is in another town about 30 minutes south of Catacamas across the valley. I have been driving on a lot of these trips, which has been just fine. We are in a valley and it is very flat terrain. It reminds me of rumbling down the gravel roads of Minnesota. The Sierra de Agalta mountain range looms just to the north of Catacamas. I love being this close to majestic mountains Driving down the dusty and very bumpy road we see a lot of people hauling milk from their dairy farms. There are a lot of cattle in Olancho. On one of the trips we also visited a few farmers that Diaconia has worked with to provide pigs (sows to be specific). The group shares a boar, and the piglets that are produced will be finished and sold for meat. I am excited to get more involved in this project.

This Friday I went with Don Roldan and Arturo to another community where they held a meeting in the local Christian Reformed Church. The meeting was held to help the community organize itself and form a board (President, Secretary, etc) that could help direct community projects. The people were very enthusiastic, and it was a great meeting. Being organized will help them be able to petition the government for grants and community development projects.

David and I will soon be working on a bio-digester stove project which I am very excited about. It is basically a big bag filled with manure that produces methane for use as cooking fuel. This type of stove would significantly cut down on fuel expense (either in terms of money or labor).

--Matt