Here's a start on some photos around Ojojona, the town where I am living and where we are building the water treatment plant. It is about an hour south of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. It has a few thousand people in the town, and maybe about 10,000 including all the surrounding little towns. Its sort of a pretty little place, save the trash that's littered everywhere. Trash is only collected about once a month, and so there doesn't seem to be much motivation to throw it anywhere but the streets. Here's a view on the road that is just near our house.
We are renting the house of the water board President. It is only two rooms, plus a toilet/shower/washboard area, so they are living at his wife's mothers house. The house is reasonably nondescript - the two boys I'm working with share one room, and I have the other. Here's a shot of the "pila". The water is stored there for days when we don't have water. Now its the rainy season, so we tend to have water about every other day. To the left is the wash board which is for, go ahead and guess...
Speaking of water, here's a view of the creek that goes behind our house. On rainy days, it is very taunting. We pass over the bridge near our house (shown in the first photo), and the water is raging. The first couple weeks I was here we had more rain than I have ever seen in my life. Absolute buckets of it, about 18 hours a day. The creek is raging, and we get home, and it is one of the no water days in our house. How is this possible!! The stuff falls from the sky, but the town is not set up to supply anyone with water everyday.
There are a bunch of donkeys running around. Actually, they move very slowly, but they do carry a bunch, as do the horses. Most days there are people going to and fro moving stuff around via the donkeys, them with their cowboy hats. The scene is very pastoral, but the men will often have some flourescent backpack or something that just doesn't quite fit. The donkeys have my heart, they are often rather severely harassed by whatever neighborhood dogs are around. It seems to be that the smaller the dog, the more it has to bark at and generally attempt to intimidate anything larger than it. We have in fact seen donkeys be chased down by a small pack of dogs.
And finally, a pretty view to finish it off. This is just past the site where our water treatment plant is being built. We go up this way to do water testing of the existing water sources. As you see, it is very hilly around us. That is indeed Honduras. We are at an elevation of about 4500 ft in our little town. Which is nice, as it makes it (slightly) cooler and less bug ridden. Allegedly, we are in a relatively malaria free zone, which is also a nice bonus.
There are many more little details around to capture, which I will attempt to do.... Stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment