Journey to Colón

By Matt

There are also some Christian Reformed churches in the department of Colón up on the north coast, just north of the expansive department of Olancho (where I live). Some years ago Diaconia did a housing project up there, and the people are paying back the houses little by little. So, at least once a year Leti (the woman who manages the loan program) has to go and get the books all up to date. Jordan and I accompanied Leti and her mother Conchita on the 6 hour journey on mostly dirt roads through the middle of Honduras.

We passed through some of the beautiful hidden valleys of Olancho crossing several mountain ranges. As we entered Colón we started to notice it got hotter, more humid, and there were many more palm trees around.

After arriving in Bonito Oriental (the pretty east) and leaving our bags at a church member’s house we moved on to another town called Feo Oriental (the ugly east). The joke is that “Ugly” is actually more pretty than “Pretty”. Leti got right to the paper work and Jordan and I taught the people about Moringa and how to use and cultivate it and gave them some seeds. We also gave them some useful bean seeds and talked about what people grow on the north coast.

You farmers might be interested to see this corn shelling operation. A lot of corn is harvested by hand (since it is grown in the mountains) and then shelled later.

One of the men has an African palm farm. We talked about what he could grow under the palms instead of having to spray all the time to kill weeds. He want to try a green-manure cover crop of sword beans, so I’m going to send him some seeds with the missionary Caspar who travels up that way once in a while.

Here is a picture of the “heads” of fruit that come off the African Palms. They can weigh up to 100 pounds and contain a lot of vegetable oil. They are cut off the tree with a special tool at the end of a long pole. It is certainly a different world up on the north coast.