Orientation Continues

Day Two: Visit to the Farm.

Part of our MCC orientation involves meeting other MCCers and seeing the projects they are a part of. Wednesday, we traveled with Darrin, Simon, and Marcos (an MCC employee) about one hour out of San Pedro Sula to El Cipres, better known as the farm, a project of the Honduran Mennonite Church and the location where Josh and Maria are helping to coordinate sustainable agriculture projects and run a retreat center. There at the farm, they have several fish ponds where they grow Tilapia, used by the retreat center cooks and persons from the community as a good protein source to supplement the common rice-based dishes.

(note: I was unsuccessful uploading photos for this post and the next due to a slow internet connection - will try again later..... check back in)

Also, they have several fruit trees, garden initiatives, and several pigs. Recently they acquired a pair of sheep and were happy to learn that Virgil could be of assistance with questions regarding sheep breeding and tending. Aside from the heat and humidity, we found the farm to be a delightful oasis of growing things and a great change from the city. We hope to spend a few days there with Josh and Maria in September when we have a break from language study to attend meetings in Nicaragua and are in transition from Copan to Le Ceiba. We were also lucky to meet Andrew and Amanda at the farm. They are MCC Connecting Peoples Coordinators and just happened to have a group from the US staying at the farm’s retreat center. It was good to finally meet all the folks we have been reading or hearing about on the MCC team here. A really good group of people.

Day Three: Getting to Know San Pedro Sula.

On our last day of orientation, we met with Julie in the MCC office to review some final details and to take a walking tour of San Pedro Sula, a very bustling city indeed. Word has it, SPS is one of the fastest growing cities in Central America or at least in Honduras. We moved watchfully through the crazy traffic on the streets to locate the bus stops, including the city buses to the huge new terminal for out-of-town buses located away from city central. With the chaos of the city central, I can’t imagine finding an intra-city or intra-country bus there – fortunately those connections have recently been moved from a hodge-podge of locations in the city to a dedicated terminal on the south side. All non-city buses must use that terminal. This is important for us as we will be traveling to SPS periodically to check in at the office. The terminal, known as “Metropolitana” will be our arrival and departure point from Tegucigalpa or other parts of Central America. We also trekked around the Central Park area, very nicely cordoned off, grabbed some lunch and office supplies, and hurried to get to our medical exam at the office of a physician from the Mennonite church in SPS. With that we were officially declared “oriented” and headed home.

We spent one last evening with Darrin & Julie and their children. We got to know them quite well during our orientation and appreciate their gracious hospitality, especially during such an unusually hectic week. It was a treat to play with the children. Simon was fascinated by my birding hobby and constantly wanted to look through my binoculars and then find the grackles and “loros” in the book. He even took the birding book to bed one night! Lucia is a sweetheart and charmer that kept warming up to us more each day. On the last night we shared a strange new fruit, pronounced “leek”. It has a red, spiky shell with a mushy, very sweet meat inside.

As we have said several times, San Pedro Sula is one hot city. You can tell in the photos, this was the end of another hot steamy day in the tropics.

Tomorrow, Darrin will take us to the bus terminal to leave for Copan. Then they pick up three incoming SALTers, who they will pack off for Copan on Sunday. Sunday evening they pick up a Canadian MCC staffer to escort on visits of several Mennonite church projects working on HIV-AIDS. It really never ends for them. We have gained a real appreciation for the work they do.