Gettin' Hitched

Last weekend, besides my camera-killing excursion, I also got to participate in a local Honduran wedding. Yup... participate. They wanted music. Specifically, the Bridal Chorus.... you know... "Here comes the bride..." I've been helping out musically a few different ways lately, and someone asked if I'd be willing and able to play at this wedding. I definitely couldn't pass up a gig like this....

The "church" is a little thatched-roof, dirt-floor hut in a nearby community.... you can see the neighborhood water pump out front. The plan was to string a very long extension cord over from a nearby home and use a keyboard for the music. Unfortunately, that Sunday, the power went out in the whole area for most of the day, which apparently is a fairly normal occurrence. The hospital's got a backup generator, but our ideas for keyboard accompaniment were shot. Time to improvise...

There were some guitars on hand, so a missionary nurse name Norma and I worked out a quick duet. She strummed the chords, I plunked out the melody... nothing fancy, but it was a special touch for the locals (remember that boisterous church service... their musical expectations aren't particularly high). Incidentally, we worked out our little masterpiece at around 4:30, and the wedding was scheduled for 4:00. In Honduras -- and pretty much every undeveloped country, from what I understand -- you learn to expect things to happen on "local time." Things pretty much just happen when they get around to happening.

Also, this wedding was BYOC.... bring your own chair.




Since Norma and I were helping out with the music throughout the service, we quite literally had front-row seats.... the photographer in me rejoiced...

The wedding is actually an excellent example of how the hospital is positively impacting the area. In the surrounding poor communities, weddings are very rare..... people just hook up, start living together, have kids (often not in that order), without ever "bothering" to tie the knot. Missionaries are able to form relationships with the locals in various ways -- during doctor visits, by employing them in the hospital or at home, or by participating in their local churches and schools. They present the gospel, discourage immoral behavior, and help organize things like this wedding.

You may have noticed the range of people at the wedding, from the girl in pink on the left to the old lady looking through the screen on the right..... Honduras has a spectacular blend of ethic groups. You've got "ladinos" (or mestizos), the descendents of Spanish explorers and the indigenous peoples they encountered. There are indigenous tribes, including the direct descendants of the ziggurat-building Mayans. There's even a small white population descended from British pirates. Around here, though, a huge chunk of people are Garifunas. [Warning: ultra-quick history lesson approaching....] Also known as the Black Caribs, the Garifunas arose in the 1600s when escaped black slaves mixed with Caribbean islanders. (Those islanders were actually a mix of warrior Caribs from the Central American mainland and poison-dart-shooting Arawaks who migrated to the Caribbean from Brazil.... but that's another story.) Anyhow, these Arawak/Carib/African folks call themselves Garifuna. After getting deported from their islands near the end of the 1700s by European settlers, they settled along the Caribbean coasts of Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize.

Fun fact: In 2005 The National Garifuna Council of Belize sent a letter to Disney about its upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.... they objected to the depiction of their ancestors as cannibals, since there's no evidence that the Caribs regularly ate humans. You might say that Disney was "disinclined to acquiesce to their request."

I made a few friends at the wedding... I believe these guys' names were Jorge, Endo, and Orbin.

PS -- I've got some more photos of the wedding online, if you want to check them out.... click here to open the photo album.

Magic Cameras

Hey, maybe it was a good thing I wrecked my camera.... after this guy dropped his digital camera in a pond it started producing pictures like these:

Those are straight from the camera, no photoshop or anything. He's got plenty more, too...

With my camera, I'm thinking that if the salt water didn't do the trick, I'll keep dunking it in different things until it starts making cool pictures. Dish soap will be next, followed by battery acid. Or maybe shampoo.... hmmmm.....

Ravenous Sea Slugs

Yesterday (Saturday), I went out snorkeling with a couple of guys to an offshore reef near the hospital. We had spotted it from the top of the hill that the hospital is on... a darker patch in the water that waves would break over when the ocean was rough. We got up at 6 on Saturday (Why so early? We're dedicated, that's why....), made our way down to the bit of beach that we judged to be directly opposite our reef, and started swimming. The sandy bottom dropped away to murky blue nothingness, the palm trees on the shore shrank to the size of toothpicks... still no reef. Questions began to gnaw at our minds like ravenous sea slugs... Did we miss the reef? Had we picked the wrong beach to start from? Was it even really a reef we'd seen from the hill? Are there sharks around here? What about giant squid? What would it actually feel like to have ravenous sea slugs gnawing on your brain?

Suddenly, we struck gold. Actually, we struck coral. It hurt. But the coral was very pretty, so that made up for the pain.

The beach at sunrise. I don't see those very often. Sunrises, I mean. Why do they have to happen so early?

Be sure to click this guy's picture for a closer look... very cool.

A starfish. You can tell because it's shaped like a star.

By the same logic, this strange aquatic creature is known as a "nerdfish."

I hope you've enjoyed these photos. There won't be any more like them. You see, they were taken with my smaller digital camera that I always carry with me. It's actually waterproof -- you're allowed to take it out into the rain or dunk it in a few feet of water. I've gone swimming with it dozens of times and never had a problem. On this snorkeling outing, as always, I was careful not to take it too deep, where the pressure would have forced water in through its rather wimpy seals.... what I didn't realize was that it actually has a 30-minute time limit on how long you can use it in the water. Apparently it can only hold its breath for so long.... I had it out there for around 3 hours. Oops. Its little electronic brain is probably fried. At any rate, it won't turn on now. I might try to open it up and see if it's damp inside... maybe I can dry it out and revive it. I'm not optimistic on what the salt water has done to its poor little innards, though. Ah well. At least its last moments were happy ones....

Fortunately, I still have my nicer camera. The blog must go on! Actually, I recently learned that a photo blog is actually known as a "flog." So, the flog will go on. Sounds like something a weatherman would say.

Monkey See, Monkey Two

Here's your challenge for the day: find the monkeys. Believe it or not, there are two in the photo below. You can click on the image to zoom in, or to download a copy.


This is pretty much the view from just outside my "office", which is actually Kenton's office. [Strictly speaking, his "office" is a windowless room that opens into a garage/warehouse-type building. Outside of that building is a burn pile and a massive dumpster... I was standing between them when I got this shot. Much less impressive, I know.... I just thought I should come clean in the interest of journalistic accuracy. Anyway, back to the story....]

These days Kenton spend most of his time at his house, programming updates for the applications used in the hospital network. When I'm not making house calls or saving the day by fixing problems that come up with the hospital network, I use his office as a base for dissecting old laptops and performing other heinous experiments. I was heading out to run an errand yesterday, and I almost ran into someone standing by the door, watching a group of monkeys. I pulled out the little camera that I always carry and took a few quick shots before they disappeared deeper into the jungle. I'm hoping to find them sometime when I've got my nicer zoom-lens camera... supposedly there are a couple of groups that hang around the area. Until then, I'll have to settle for the "see that little blob... that's a monkey" kind of shot.

Speaking of which... did you find them both? Give up? Click here for the answer...

Livin' La Vida Local

Sunday evening I went out to a local village church with some folks from the hospital.... I think the best word to describe the service would have to be "boisterous." We had a song leader singing enthusiastically into a mike, with a guy on guitar plunking along as best he could. They were both amplified out of a couple of small speakers cranked to maximum volume. The congregation sang along fervently, clapping and banging tambourines, with little regard for minor details like pitch or rhythm. It was a riot of noise... and, at the same time, incredibly beautiful. People weren't concerned with sounding good or looking just right, they were focused on God... which is what I think He appreciates most anyway.

It struck me how incredibly similar the service was to another church I'd been to, last summer in Ecuador... another one-room concrete building set on the dirt-road main street of a coastal village, filled with people lifting praises to God despite their poverty. Which pleases God more... the lavish gifts of the wealthy, or the widow's last penny? I think the people I'm down here to serve just might have some lessons for me in return.

Mark 12:41-44

Help Me Help You

It's great to be an answer to prayer... even if that means you're the "computer geek" that people have been praying would come help Kenton. Hey, if the shoe fits...

My first week down here has been awesome. Basically, my job is helping people. People have problems, I fix them, and it totally makes their day. Most of the jobs are within the hospital itself... getting a computer to print from a network printer, installing software, working on much-needed hardware upgrades. Even better, though, are the "house calls"... going out to the homes of some of the missionary families and fixing their misbehaving home computers, or helping them install the new VOIP (voice-over-internet protocol) phones that the hospital staff are just getting set up with. You get to go out somewhere new, often meet new people, fix a problem that might have been plaguing them for weeks (like I said, Kenton is really swamped with requests and projects)... and often, they're so grateful that they insist I stay for lunch, or dinner, or at least have a nice glass of iced tea while I work.

I was actually a little bit nervous coming down to be the computer fix-it guy... I know a bit about computers, but I'm definitely no expert. It's gone really well, though... so far I've always been able to figure out what's wrong, or at least find the answer online (thank you, google!). I'm dreading that first time that there'll be some major problem that stumps me. Of course, I've always got the "I'll talk to Kenton and get back to you" escape route.

And, of course, between fix-it requests I'm still working on sorting through the shelf of old computers and finding stuff worth keeping. Except, it turns out there's not only a shelf of old computers, there's a whole attic area full of them... sort of a computer graveyard. There are at least a dozen up there, maybe two dozen. Some of them date back to the days of Pong and Space Invaders.... I feel like an archeologist, sorting through ancient relics. Every so often, though, I come across a computer worth keeping... it's like finding a toaster jumbled in with a bunch of stone tools and arrowheads.

The doctor is in.

I came around a corner yesterday and came upon this little dude. As he scampered across the hot concrete, he'd stop every few seconds, shake one of his feet as if it was getting too hot, go a few more inches, wiggle another foot.... he looked almost human. Except, of course, for the fact that he looks exactly like a lizard.

My Evil Plan

What happens when you put a chemist in charge of computers? Mass carnage:


Actually, that pile of electronics represents one of my main assignments over the past few days. I've been going through a shelf full of old computers, figuring out what works, and trashing what doesn't work.... after ripping out whichever guts might still be useful. I've managed to piece together a few working computers so far. They'll get used in a variety of ways... around the hospital, at the homes of some of the missionary doctors... we might even donate a few to some local schools. I feel like the Dr. Frankenstein of the Caribbean... piecing together my mechanical monsters, creating my army of minions to terrorize the villagers of Balfate.... today, Honduras... tomorrow, the world!! Mwaaahh-haa-haaaa.....

Speaking of the Caribbean, here's a glimpse of the hospital itself, peeking out of the lush Honduran jungle, with the balmy waters of the Caribbean in the background.... ummm, is this a hospital, or a tropical resort?



By the way.... that dead bug from last time? Apparently it was only mostly dead. It wandered off somewhere during the night. I'll probably find it in my backpack or under my sheets or something. Surprise....

Another Excellent Adventure

Question: What do scorpions, baked beans, and dead beetles have in common?
Hint: It's not what I had for dinner last night. Although that would be pretty awesome....
Answer: Keep reading…

If you haven’t already heard, for the next six weeks or so I’ll be down here in the tiny Honduran village of Balfate, volunteering at a missionary hospital. What on earth am I doing down here, you ask? Well, I answer, lots of stuff.

Basically, there’s this modern hospital sitting out in the middle of the Honduran jungle. (Actually, it’s at the edge of the jungle, since we’re just a few hundred yards from the ocean, but that’s beside the point.) This modern hospital has a modern computer network with modern phones and a lot of other modern electronic stuff. And there’s one guy stuck with the full-time, 7-day-a-week job of keeping it all running. I’m here for a while to take on some of the normal, everyday stuff so he can work on some much-needed upgrades, and maybe get a bit of a break in as well.

And so…. growing restless after staying in a single country for more that six months, I stuffed my battered backpack with the bare necessities, donned my well-worn “travel-pants” (don’t ask), and set off on another Excellent Adventure (cue theme music… maybe that awesome Rocky III song…).

After a nice series of red-eye flights and a mildly hair-raising car ride across the Honduran countryside, I arrived yesterday at the hospital complex. Kenton (the guy I'm working for) showed me to my room and helped me get settled in. As he was leaving, almost as an afterthought, he gave me some advice I don’t think I’ll be forgetting anytime soon: “Hey…at night, before you slide under the sheets, you might want to check them for scorpions. And make sure to keep your backpack zipped shut tight at night.” Oh boy.

Immediately following that, I discovered I had a guest at my sink:



One other thing that happened yesterday…. on the way out of town we stopped at a surprisingly modern supermarket to pick up some groceries (I’ll be doing a lot of my own cooking… scary, I know). As I was grabbing some bananas, a middle-aged, white (gringo) lady stopped by my cart, peered in, and announced, “Single American guy, huh?” I looked in the cart… I had peanut butter and jelly supplies, cup-o-noodle, cans of baked beans, breakfast cereal, and a box of microwaveable chicken nuggets. I guess some things don't change.

So, what do scorpions, baked beans, and dead beetles have in common? Nothing, really. But they do pretty much describe my first day in Honduras.

PS - I just watched a gecko snatch up a moth from my window screen. I think I’m going to like it here.