In the South

By Matt and Katie

Recently we traveled to the south of Honduras to help out Gloribel and Lisa in the health program by giving trainings on how to grow and use Moringa trees. This had been in the planning stages for a while, and Lisa had already grown a nursery of Moringa trees from seeds that we got from Olancho. The south is a very distinct part of Honduras, it is known for its very hot temperatures, wind, watermelons, and shrimp farms. It is also known for malnutrition and deep poverty. Our first stop was Amapala, a volcanic island very near the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Matt and Lisa led a meeting of women who meet regularly as part of Diaconia’s health program. Meanwhile, Katie cooked moringa soup (in a Honduran lady’s kitchen, over the open flames for the first time… by herself… for twenty people… successfully!). We also brought some powder made from dried and ground moringa leaves. A woman added it to her tortillas. They tasted good, as long as you don’t mind green tortillas. We added 2 tablespoons (which contains about 100% of the vitamin A needed for a child) to make about 9 tortillas (most children eat around that many per day).

In the video below, you can see the women taking turns reading from the pamphlets Matt brought. Matt goes on to explain a few things and the women pipe in with their own ideas.

To wrap up the meeting, Lisa distributed the moringa trees that she had grown from seed. Each woman got two or three seedlings and several more women took bags of seeds to plant nurseries. When the seeds grow into seedlings, they’ll distribute the seedlings to other women in their community and train them on the uses and benefits. We spent the night on the island too, in the house of one of the women in the group named Juanita. She has a little guest house and serves up quite the meals, this one containing a whole fish, a whole crab, green beans, and boiled bananas.
But, how on earth do you eat a meal like this? Juanita got out her grinding stone to smash the crabs so they could be eaten. She’s also a big fan of the eyeballs of the fish. I gave her mine.



Sunday we were able to take some time to enjoy the water and go around the island a bit. Amapala is an interesting place in the fact that it located in an absolutely beautiful place, but the poverty is immense. More people live in houses made of plastic sheeting on the island than any other place we’ve been to in Honduras. On the flip side, there is a lovely brick road that goes all around the island and little quaint mototaxis as a common mode of transportation, which of course promotes tourism.

Monday the four of us went to anther community on the mainland and did the same training on moringa in one of the churches in the area. It was so incredibly hot this day that we just hope all the little seedlings survived!