Helado

Now Honduras is getting into its winter. Up in La Campa, you can feel the difference. Its really cold! Actually I think its probably only getting down into the 50s, if that, but its a big change from the 80s and 90s I had been used to. My co-workers at CASM keep talking about how ´exagagerado´ this cold weather is. They say its helado, which means frozen. Some mornings you can see clouds flying a hundred meters or less above La Campa. I was coming into Gracias this morning in the back of a pickup loaded with green peppers (they smelled wonderful). My campesino travel buddy commented that it was going to be cold in Gracias because there was ice in the air, signaling to a layer of fine mist that we could see over the city.

Earlier this week I went into a village on top of a mountain ridge for the building of a chicken coop. The wind was blowing crazy strong and whipping clouds over and through the house that some of us were hiding behind. In defiance of the icy winds, we build the chicken coop out of really cold mud and adobe. It was nice to be able to throw some mud around with the campesinos and get a little bit of labor in, though my hands were freezing afterwards. When we stopped for lunch, we ate some hot, fresh-ground corn tortillas with lunch. Wonderful :D

I think my body is in denial that Honduras can actually be this cold. I think one of my selfish goals for coming to Honduras was that I would be able to life for a year in hot weather. These last few days I`ve been wearing a couple of shirts, a sweater, and my one thin Goshen College sweatshirt so I can stay warm. Isn´t it ironic, don`t you think?