The Continental 737 approaches the airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, as all flights into that city do: fly in fast, drop suddenly, hit the runway and hit the brakes. My seat mate in row eight, noticing my death grip on the arm rests, explains that it's because Tegucigalpa is closely ringed by mountains. I learn later that yesterday the same flight ran out of runway before it ran out of brakes, so the plane did a last minute nose up and diverted to San Pedro Sula for more fuel before attempting it again. The second time the pilot found the head wind.
Houston is three hours and several decades behind us as we climb down the metal stairs onto the tarmac and make our way across the concrete to the low terminal building and the long line for customs. A young woman in a cubicle asks for my passport in Spanish and staples some official looking documents inside, then we push through the thick crowd of travelers in the small, dusty, unairconditioned building to the noisy baggage area. I'm thinking I have dropped into the middle of a John Steinbeck novel.
At baggage we are met by Rene Crow, a SAMS missionary who has lived in Honduras for three-plus years. SAMS (South American Missionary Society) missionaries are invited by the local bishop, in this case the Rt. Rev. Lloyd Allen, to spread the Gospel through evangelism, social ministries, and church planting. Rene shepherds all the missionary teams who come to Tegucigalpa, including ours, whose mission is to drill a water well.
We are 17 souls — most of whom are veterans to the water well drilling ministry. We come from several cities and several churches in the diocese: among them is Louis Manz from St. Luke's, San Antonio, who is working on his doctorate at UTSA in environmental science and engineering with a specialty in hydrogeology. He is the person who started this ministry four years ago. Weldon Hammond is the director of the Institute for Research and Water and Environmental Resources at UTSA; he found the water well ministry through Louis. Vicki Knipp is from McAllen. An old hand of medical missions, Vicki is our unofficial nurse and dispenser of medicine. Eric and Julianna Dube are a young couple from St. Philip's, Uvalde, who recently learned about the ministry and are making their first trip. You know what Eric does for a living? He drills water wells. I'm along for some "immersion journalism" — it's time for The Church News to live the life it reports on frequently. We gather up our duffels, half of which are stuffed with supplies and hygiene items we will leave in Honduras, and head for the old yellow school bus that will be our transportation for the next ten days. Let the adventure begin.
The days start early in Honduras. By 6 a.m. the sun is fully awake and spreading cheer from a cloudless blue sky. Students and workers stream though the gates of the conference center where we are staying — on bicycles, on motor scooters, and on foot. The center, El Zamarano, is part of an agricultural university that draws students from all over Central America. We are gathered under a huge old tree in the courtyard, the traditional spot for the morning team meeting. We start here every morning at 6:15 with prayers, Scripture readings, and a reflection. We will end the day at about 8 p.m. with another team meeting. On our first night in Honduras we launched the trip with a Eucharist, and as Linda and Vicki led us in singing, several Honduran women started peeking out from behind the stone pillars. We motioned to them to join us and discovered they were also staying at the conference center, learning to become mid-wives. Our guitar music and songs had drawn them from their rooms; one withered and toothless old woman was still dressed for bed. They spoke not one word of English, but we all know the language of music, so together we sang and clapped and made Eucharist. Later we spoke of how their presence enriched our worship.
After breakfast in the cafeteria — thank you, Lord, that coffee crosses cultures — we are back on the bus for the hour and a half trip to Las Crucitas, the site of our well drilling. The village is located in the mountains, literally at the end of the trail. After about an hour of circumnavigating potholes and boulders and careening around corners where this is absolutely no shoulder, I ask if the road is always this bad. "Oh, we'll get to the bad road pretty soon," answers a veteran team member. Our trip takes us through Yuscaran, a lovely old town of cobblestone-streets that is something of a resort to the locals. The narrow streets, lined with stone buildings, are about six inches wider than the bus. We get slowed down when we meet a car coming the other direction and negotiate which vehicle is going to back up to let the other one pass.
Old school busses, many with "Swithinville ISD" still painted in black letters on the side, are the predominant mode of travel for rural Hondurans. Little groups of travelers wait by the side of the road for the next coche — which comes when it comes.
Las Crucitas was named many years ago when a group of Christian missionaries stumbled upon it. The missionaries learned that the villagers were convinced their small town was inhabited by bad spirits, so the missionaries set little crosses on the hills surrounding the village — hence the name Las Crucitas. There are maybe 50 houses in the village, all with chickens and pigs and donkeys in their dirt yards. The family oven — a huge, stone cave — is also outdoors. One day I watch a woman making rosquitas, little round corn meal cookies. Hondurans love to float them in their coffee to soften them up. The oven burns on wood, which seÒora feeds into it one piece at a time. The rosquitas are lined up in formation on a large paddle with a very long handle that is shoved into mouth of the oven, and seÒora seems to know exactly when to pull out the paddle, dump its contents, and reload it for another round.
The family's water is held in a cement trough known as a pila. Las Crucitas gets its water from a mountain spring box through a pipeline shared with two or three other villages; only one village per day gets water. Even when there is water, it is fat with the bacteria of animal carcasses and human and animal excrement that seep into the ground. The pila is the source for drinking, cooking, and bathing water, and it's where seÒora does the family wash. Water is precious — it has to do double duty. We have come to Las Crucitas to drill a water well and bring potable water to the village. Several months ago the team was here and, after 12 days of work, found water at 200 feet, but the well casing collapsed and the hole fell in on itself. This trip the team has selected a new site on lower ground. Already the villagers have cleared a field and built a road by hand in order to get the drill rig in. The rig is mounted on the back of a pick up truck and is run by a separate air compressor. The outfit was purchased with a $50,000 grant from Episcopal Relief and Development. Along with the six Americans working the rig are four Hondurans; the overall plan is to train Hondurans to continue the work in other parts of the area. We aren't taking them a fish; we're teaching them to fish.
Weldon Hammond is giving me basic lessons in geology: A million and a half years ago, areas around Honduras (now Guatemala and Nicaragua) were covered with volcanoes. These volcanoes left Honduras covered with volcanic ash as much as several thousand feet deep. The ash turned into rock. After the volcanoes came the earthquakes that lifted and fractured the earth, allowing pockets of water to collect. The trick is to find those pockets. One day I go with Weldon and Louis Manz to scout for new well sites. They point out cracks in the rocky hillside, evidence of shifting plates. There's water nearby. In a dry creek bed, Louis digs down a few inches and grabs a handful of dirt. It holds together slightly; there's water under here. A seÒora and her children and the family dog, watching us from afar, come to investigate. They hang back until Weldon addresses her: how many homes are in that village over the hill? How many people? Do they have any water now? Two or three more Hondurans sidle up as we talk. Yes, this will be a good site for a new well. The ground is level enough to park the rig; the road, while rocky, is penetrable. Weldon says we will be back.
Drilling is a dirty, dusty, frustrating business. On day two, after reaching 75 feet the first day, the drill head comes apart and can't be put back together. The drilling continues with a smaller drill head, and the work goes more slowly. Day two sees a net gain of only 10 feet. They think water will be found at 150 feet or so. Then the air compressor starts sputtering. The fuel line is clogged. Take it apart, clean it, put it back together, crank it up, and the battery is too weak by now to turn over. Jump the battery from the rig truck. Hooray, it starts. This would all be easier if there were a Home Depot close by. If it weren't four hours into Tegucigalpa for parts. If they didn't have to back out of the hole at the end of every day, one five foot section at a time.
But we see the fruits of the efforts one day in Ojo de Agua, a small town we pass through on our way to Las Crucitas, where the water ministry drilled a well several months ago. As we watch the women coming to the well with their empty buckets, I am told this story: During the drill in Ojo de Agua, a contingent of Hondurans arrived one day, led by a well-dressed gentleman on a bicycle. With great ceremony, he presented a scroll to the drill team, who, unrolling it, found it to be a petition signed by every single resident of another village — Flor Azul — imploring the drill team to come to their village also. The stately gentleman, it turned out, was the village mayor. Louis Manz and Weldon Hammond have scouted Flor Azul, have found a suitable site, and have pronounced it quite do-able. A team will go there in May.
I am thinking that this is strangest committee meeting I have ever sat through, this meeting of the women of Las Crucitas. We are five Americans and 11 Hondurans, and we are here to eradicate illness, or at least to reduce it substantially. I am no longer a journalist, but a mother; and we are no longer two cultures, but one, as we compare notes and swap remedies for sick babies. They know about sick babies in Las Crucitas. They know about diarrhea and stomach aches. They know about skin diseases and head lice. They may not know that eight out of 10 illnesses are directly related to contaminated water. While the men of the village drill for good water, the women of the village learn what to do with it when they get it. They learn not to bathe the baby in the water they cook with; they learn about boiling water that is not potable; they learn that if you don't have water, the friction from rubbing your hands together fast will kill germs (shoot, I learn that).
From each training group, the team designates two or three women to be promotadores. They will carry the hygiene training to the rest of the village. The promotadores who were trained in Ojo de Agua on the last trip decided they wanted to survey residents of that village to find out what their water needs are and what their knowledge level is, and the water well team is astounded to learn that on the first day of the survey, four women visited 83 homes. In each home they were welcomed, and in each home they prayed before they left. Later in the week, another 113 surveys are completed in one day. This is without benefit of telephones, e-mail, cell phones, or even cars. They walked from house to house. All in all they managed to complete 697 of the 700 surveys we took with us.
Down the road from where the women meet, in a cinder block building sometimes used as a community center, four members of the team spend the day with the children of the village. The children are tireless. Yesterday I watched some children kicking around a large plastic bag stuffed with something unidentifiable. Today they have real soccer balls to play with. They are ecstatic. Today they also have crayons and paper and Play-doh. They have kites to fly. They have Bible stories. I never expected to hear 80 children sing "Joshua ‘fit' the battle of Jericho" in Spanish, but that is what I am hearing today. Angels are singing, here and in heaven. The team teaches the children a few English words — "thank you" and "good bye" are two of them. Later I learn about the last day in Las Crucitas from the last guy out — Archdeacon Don Lee. Don has made several treks to Honduras and is often not only the spiritual director but also the lead driller. On the last day of the mission, after the rest of the team had packed the bus and left, Don stayed behind to shut down the drill rig and drive it out. As he rolled through the village, he related, the children lined the roads waving and smiling and shouting "good bye, good bye." It is the faces and the voices of the children that stay with you the longest.
I leave the water well team after six days and head home to my work, which amazingly has dwindled in importance in the past week. The team stays for four more days, and when they return, I learn they did find water, set the casing, capped it off, and left the Hondurans to install the pump. Las Crucitas has potable water. Their lives will be changed. Our lives have been changed. This year, about 600 people from 38 churches of our diocese will travel to six different countries to be the hands and feet and voice of Christ. They will be church planting teams and medical teams and veterinary teams and construction teams. Some of them will visit Russian children's camps, and some will teach women to create tapestry they can sell to earn a living. If you want to know more about mission work, if you want to join a mission team, or if your congregation wants to mount a mission effort, contact the Bishop's Deputy for World Mission Betty Chumney at the Jones Center in San Antonio.
