a day in the life at project manuelito

there's a certain rhythm of life we encounter in honduras. this being my third visit to the project, i know the pattern of the days. it's an amusing balance of a predictable schedule, coupled with the necessary flexibility needed when encountering the latin american culture. a culture where plans are virtually unnecessary, due to the fact that they often tend to change on a minute by minute basis. but even so, this is a fairly accurate glimpse of a day in the life of the manuelito family...

1: the big white bus that gets us to and from teguc for the week

2: we wake up to this glorious honduran sky...the sky is SOOO big here!

3: the kids get dressed in their school uniforms and we all eat breakfast together

4: manuelito now has it's own school on the property, the kids are in classes between breakfast and lunch [which is a typical school day here]

5: when the kids go to school, we go to work...this almost always involves the mixer and bags of cement

6: my first job was bending two hundred pieces of pencil rod into rectangles

7: then everyone else used metal wire to tie them to the rebar to make 'baskets'

8: then the baskets were laid on top of the walls to create the header...this was later filled with concrete

9: once school lets out, we usually end up with a few eager helpers

10: in the afternoon the kids have different chores to do like sorting beans or cutting grass with machetes...that one is not fun, i tried it

11: and of course there is never a shortage of laundry to be done

12: these guys are often wandering by and like to 'help' with the laundry...and by 'help' i mean they eat the clothes off the line when no one is looking

13: usually the kids have some homework to do...there was a lot of cursive letter practice going on last week

14: there is also time in the afternoon and evening to just play...soccer is usually the most popular option

15: once we're done working for the day we get to play too

16: electricity at the project can be sketchy. we went without for about thirty hours in a row this time...a record for our particular group. this is what no electricity looks like. no electricity means no running water. no running water means bucket showers and bucket flushes.