June 10th, 2009
Ellen and Merlin
I would like you to meet Ellen. Ellen comes from the US where she worked as a jazz musician and after studying Spanish here a year and a half ago and seeing the extreme poverty in the aldeas (rural village communities) she came back to live and help the people in these areas. Her first priority is the schools where she identifies needs and then aims for raising enough funds from her contacts at home to fill them. Some of the rural schools are abominable……the one that we will visit on Friday has no desks, no blackboards, no books. Ellens philosophy is not to be seen as “charity” so when she takes on a project it is with the “buy in” of a community and they do the work. One of the projects that I thought was really novel is that she has the carpenters give her their left over wood chunks and hires rural folks to sand them (1 Lempira or about 7 cents a piece). Then they are taken to schools for the kids to use as building blocks. I will “contract” her to have some blocks made for the kids at the orphanage.
Building the house
The photos are of our morning in a rural area up in the hills about a half hour from Copan. This young man is building a house for himself, his younger brother and 18 year old “aunt”. He is 16. He and his brother (who is 12) support themselves by cutting wood from higher up and hauling it into town down the mountain to town to sell. Ellen has helped with the funds to build the house as their other house is falling to bits.
Carol and Brayan, sporting the Honduran colours
Honduras played El Salvador tonight and WON! Great celebrations in the streets.