Thursday, Oct 16, 2008
5:30PM Frenando and I are on our way to Teguci. Jessica will meet us. Fernando will purchase powder milk and head back while Jessica and I go to the World Bank meeting. I will take King Autobus back this afternoon.
9:00AM Met with Dante Mossi, PhD, Official de Operaciones de Pais (Operations Officer for Honduras). He listened with great interest in the L4L program. He explained that, in exchange for certain loan dept forgiveness, the Honduras government agreed to raise certain moneys through normal taxation procedures and use it for certain very specific social programs; several have to do with supporting elementary schools lunch programs. The government channels these funds through an education council that we should contact. These funds are considerable and are committed many years into the future. Dr. Mossi believes that these primary school programs are run with relative efficiency and will assist us as we move forward. He gave us the name of a director with the Department of Education to start with. Dr. Mossi was really impressed that we can provide meals at $.52 each. He attributes it to our all-volunteer headquarters (he is used to a large bureaucracy on top of projects). Mr. Mossi will recommend us to some executives at Banco Ficohsa and Mr. Kaffi, the owner of a Honduras creamery that makes dried milk. This is a start but a tough start; he will assist but we have to move our agenda forward. A lot of work for Jessica and me. L4L has another friend and that is good.
10:30AM Dr. Avila’s secretary set up a meeting with the Director of PRAF for 10:30 tomorrow morning. I will need to rent a car to make this work (remember all my stuff is in a motel room in Nacaomi).
11:00AM Drove to City Bank and called for Cynthia Rodriguez unannounced. She couldn’t see us, possibly one day next week. Translation: She’s not going to see us. We’ll keep working through Pat; further pushing by Jessica and me will work against us.
12:00PM Since I will be running back and forth on a schedule, I rented a car.
12:30PM On my way back to Nacaomi. Short story: Part of a cliff on the mountainous roads to Nacaomi is slowly sluffing (shifting downward due to the poor integrity of the bedrock) into the valley below. This year’s very heavy rains during a longer than normal rainy season has lubricated the bedrock fracture system where the sluffing has been slowly active for years. The result is that huge 15’ diameter boulders move (or fall) onto the road as the road settles. In essence, the effort is to maintain a stable (static) road on an unstable (dynamic) area. Right now, there is earth-moving equipment on site to maintain a passable one lane dirt road until the rainy season stops. Traffic can be held up from minutes to hours (last week, the road was closed for an entire day, tomorrow I will be held up an hour as rocks are pushed off and the road is made passable). This is what civil engineers live for; will be interesting to watch as a long term fix is put in place during the next year.
5:00PM Having a beer with Fernando in Nacaomi.
8:00PM End of day