Wednesday, June 04, 2014

A mix of events, thoughts, and whatever

A lot of seemingly non-connected things have been happening in the last week or two. This blog post includes a number of them - in a very disconnected fashion.

Reina, a young lawyer, who works in Caritas’ program on Strengthening Citizenship has been doing research into the human rights situation in the municipalities where the project is working.

One of these is Dulce Nombre. The juez de la paz, an official to take legal complaints has a backload of cases, no secretarial support, and a provisional office. This sounds just like what the authors of  The Locust Effect wrote about.  See my earlier post here

One of the major concerns in legal issues in the Dulce Nombre municipality is domestic violence. Illegal gun traffic is another.

The health situation is dire. The Dulce Nombre health center is supposed to get medicine every three months from the government. The last shipment of medicines was last August, the only one last year. The doctor though has been able to get donations of a few basic medicines from some suppliers in San Pedro Sula.

The rains have finally started. Usually people here plant about May 15, the feast of St. Isidore the Farmer. But this year there had been little rain until a few days ago.

The rains have been torrential – as is not uncommon. The results are muddy roads and mud slides. Today on the road between Copán Ruinas and San Jerónimo there was mud over the road – despite a stone retention wall.


The house in Plan Grande is going well. Thursday they will start laying bricks on the first floor. I am hoping it will be done late September or early October. We’ll see.  I just hope I have enough patience, I really want to move out there as soon as I can.


Last week a taxi driver from Santa Rosa was killed in his taxi outside Dulce Nombre. It seems quite strange since, as I’ve been told, it was not a robbery and the driver may have been shot by a passenger from within the taxi. The taxi had been active in politics and was supportive of LIBRE, the opposition party. He also had a regular program on a community radio station in a nearby municipality. I am almost positive I rode in his taxi several times in Santa Rosa.

Saturday is the Vigil of Pentecost. We will be having a 6 pm to midnight vigil which will include Mass (and maybe a procession.)

Next week Padre German and I will go to two zones of the parish for the workshops with community base community leaders. There will be meetings in the four parish zones this month.

Deacons Mark and Jeff
Later this month I will be going to Iowa for the ordination of three young men to the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Dubuque. I know two of them since they wen tot Iowa State. One of them, transitional deacon Jeff Dole, sang the Gospel at the Pope Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday this year. The three of them distributed communion at the canonization of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. The other one I know, Mark Murphy, started a story when he was an undergraduate at Iowa State University that outlived his time here. Supposedly I was a Navy Seal in my former life and had a conversion to a justice and peace advocate. I neither confirm nor deny this.

I do, however, still want to confirm that I continue to be a vegetarian; today, when I encountered cows sitting on a rural road I didn’t even consider slaughtering them. I honked the horn for a long time and a worker (cow herder?) came and helped me get through them. So much for Honduran traffic jams.






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