Mission: Possible

Day four

Day four in Honduras starts bright and early per usual. Shortly after 9 a.m., we march back to the school to finish painting the sign. The boys had substantially more work to complete because in order to fully mount the razor wire, we needed to hire a welder. Luckily for us, Marvin, Carias’s apprentice, is a knowledgeable welder, although we wouldn’t need his services till after lunch.

The finished sign, with its legend, Escuela Urbana Mixta de Manuel Bonilla.

While the boys painstakingly uncoiled yards upon yards of razor wire, the girls took to painting flowers and butterflies on the school’s sign. We finished the sign around lunchtime, but the boys still had a long day of work ahead of them. We all left for home shortly after 12 noon and were delighted to see that Andy Smith, our resident chef extraordinaire, had made buckets of guacamole from scratch. Andy’s culinary skills are beyond reproach, yet the family’s cook was determined to add eggs to the guacamole. When Andy wasn’t looking, she added eggs to the mixture. Unintended addition of eggs aside, the dish was quite delicious and an instant group favorite! We even dubbed it “guacahuevos.”

It was more than a long day's work, but the GU boys successfully topped a fence with razor wire.

After lunch, the boys headed back to finish the razor wire fence. The girls remained at the house to put together the backpacks that we intended to hand out at the schools. We found out we needed 62 backpacks, so Sarah Minkler, another one of our great interpreters, a couple of other girls, and Profe headed out into the town to round up 62 backpacks.

Again, we could’ve purchased the backpacks in the States, but we love to honor the local economy whenever possible. It’s not everyday that several stores’ entire stock of backpacks will be purchased.

The girls that were fortunate enough to not run errands on this particularly hot afternoon enjoyed a delightful siesta, sprawled out on the tile floor, in an attempt to get cool. Once Profe and the backpack purchasers returned, we set up stations to ensure a fair distribution of the school supplies we brought with us. Most of the supplies we put in the children’s bags (mechanical and colored pencils, pens, markers, crayons, and chalk) are donated to us via a school-supplies drive we host at the law school.

Every single child at the kindergarten would receive a backpack, and the 16 neediest children at the elementary school would get one. Normally, we would hand the backpacks to the children ourselves, but Profe didn’t want us to single out the children at the elementary school because it would be unfair and potentially humiliating to the students.

A moonlit dinner

After the backpacks were prepared, all of the girls enjoyed some leisurely time of about an hour or so until the boys were scheduled to arrive. Some resumed napping and others delved into their respective reading materials.

Around 6 p.m., the boys had yet to arrive and suddenly the power went out. The entire town of Lepaera was in a blackout. About 20 minutes after the power outage, the boys arrived home. Profe lit some candles around the house and we all hastily made our dinner plates and took them outside. It was actually much lighter outside because of the extreme brightness of the moon and we all enjoyed our meal campfire style.

About 45 minutes after we had all finished eating, the power suddenly came soaring back on. The gang played another game of Celebrity and then called it a night.