Biblioteca Nueva Esperanza

Dear friends, Sept. 11th, 2007 I sure hope this note finds you all in good spirits and health. We are doing great. Hurricane Felix gave us all a scare, but ultimately wasn’t too bad for Honduras. Yesterday was “Dia de nino” Day of the child, and we had a ton of children here playing with all the games we set up. Every year Sonrisa sets up an obstacle course with tires,cones, tunnels and balls. This year we added a horizontal ladder that we used as monkey bars. This year we also had the trampoline that everyone loves. We had basketball, soccer, badminton, volleyball, jump ropes and more.There were celebrations all over town and in all the schools they had pinatas. Our celebration was different in that we had games and no pinatas. We had good water, bananas and oranges. The children seemed to be happy with that. We got some great pictures and as soon as I learn how to get them on to the web site I will. Our first three months back have been great. We got the ambulance up and running and got another smaller four wheel drive ambulance from Sister Marta in Tegucigalpa in exchange for the printing equipment that we brought down in this last container. The container has been a huge success thanks to Maureen Henegan who donated the money to make it happen and the many people who donated items and those that helped get those items to Balgen Machine in West Stockbridge. A special thanks to Chris and his brother Art for letting me use their space to pack the container, again. The container had alot of medical equipment, first from a dentist in Connecticut who collects then donates dental equipment and then from my personal doc Bill Carey who passed away while I was putting the container together. That equipment will mostly be used by the Guaimaca area. Some of the equipment has also been donated to some nieghboring towns. Guaimaca is building a new dental / maternity clinic and we are storing the dental chairs and examing tables here until they finish the building. One interesting result of that, is, that we held a training session for women in our nieghborhood to learn how to clean teeth. We set up three of the dental chairs and a young dental hygienist down here with a medical mission did the training one morning and that afternoon we cleaned forty childrens teeth. They have cleaned alot more teeth since then and as soon as we finish the clothes sale we will start again.
Kelley and Zoila, a nieghborhood volunteer, have been selling and giving away the clothes that were brought down on the container. They organized all the clothes first and then went out into the barrios near us inviting the poorest of our nieghbors to come in and buy clothes at a super discounted price. For those without any or very little money we were able to help them too. The toys and dolls that were donated were given to the neediest children. The money collected will be used to keep the library going and help expand the library.
Dinora’s house has the bathroom and pila (water tank and wash board for washing dishes and clothes) and the roof is done. I am just waiting for the carpenter to install the door. I am kicking myself for not sending down one of those riding lawn mowers I found. It is the perfect form of transportation for Dinora who is in a wheelchair due to advanced arthritis. The electric wheelchair that I did bring down just doesn’t work for her. I did give her daughter Amanda a bike to get around on and do errands for her mom. We did paint the library and it looks great with BIBLIOTECA in big bubbly letters. We got all this and more done with the $4000 I brought down and last week I was able to purchase the roofing neccesary for the porch behind the library and for the part of the main building that we’ve wanted roof for a while now. Just that material was almost $2000. Now we’ve got to do the cement work to be able to install that roofing. I am hoping to have that all done in the next couple of months so we will be ready for school vacation. The students get out of school the end of November and go back in February. I am hoping to be ready to have classes in Music, Ceramics, Computers, Bicycle mechanics, Automotive mechanics, Horseback riding, First Aid and different sports. I’d like to have the library open for extended hours . Kelley is going to start having game nights at the library fridays and saturdays to give youth a safe place to get together, hang out, play games and do puzzles. I’ll write more very soon, as the government of Honduras has mandated that the telephone company should provide internet and phone calls cheap. We have internet here at the center and I can call you cheaper than you can call me. If you would like to hear from me, e-mail me your number and I’ll call with some great stories. I’m also going to try and write some of those stories here. As soon as I figure out how to get pictures up I will. Thanks for your interest in Guaimaca and our work here. eddie