A Typical Day in Honduras

In my previous post, I mentioned that Allen and Alan were heading out to investigate the earthquake damage in the city of La Iguala. Well, they headed out, alright, but they didn't get as far as La Iguala - in fact, they barely got outside of the city of Gracias.

They wanted Pastor Hugo to travel out with them, as he had information about where the damaged houses were located. Pastor Hugo wanted to help, but he had a problem. Last night, his truck had gotten stuck in the mud at the edge of a narrow road, and it was impeding traffic - he really needed to get it unstuck. So, Allen and Alan agreed to help get the truck out of the mud first, and then the three would head on to La Iguala.

Getting the truck out of the mud was a bit trickier than it might have been, but it still only took 15 or 20 minutes. Unfortunately, though, in pulling out the truck, a barely-buried water pipe got broken. Now the repair of the pipe was the responsibility of Allen, Alan, and Hugo.

They headed back into town for plumbing supplies, and had to arrange to have the water turned off at the water tank. Eventually, the truck was out of the mud, the water pipe was repaired, the water supply was restored, and the men decided that it was too late in the day to start off on their expedition to La Iguala. So, the trip has been rescheduled for Monday.

I'm sorry to have to put off our report and pictures of earthquake damage in La Iguala, however this days happenings are quite typical of the sort of 'snowball effect' we experience in our life here. One delay or problem often creates or uncovers another delay or problem. We've learned to word statements of our intentions carefully. We'll say "I'm hoping to get to the grocery store tomorrow," or "I'm planning to work on that paperwork this week" - because saying you will, for certain, do something is almost a guarantee that the power will be out, a holiday we don't know about will close all the stores and banks, the road will be closed, the truck will break down, the water will be turned off, . . . well, you get the idea.

I remember once, back when we lived on Guanaja, when on the spur of the moment we offered to make breakfast for a team of gringos which was visiting our town (not a team we were hosting). While arranging their trip, they hadn't realized that a certain holiday which fell during their week would mean that the restaurant (only one in town) wouldn't be able to feed them on that day. I wanted to make French Toast, but found that all the stores were out of bread. I switched to scrambled eggs, only to find that there weren't enough eggs in town for that meal. Then I decided on pancakes, and the power went out, so I couldn't use my large electric griddle (which makes about 8 pancakes at a time), and I ended up making a gazillion pancakes, one at a time, on a skillet on top of my gas stove. HA! Since I actually did find a way to feed the group, I guess I won that time!