Honduras: 772 bedkits today

From Honduras 2008 Photo Album

24^th September, 2008, Honduras

Today's distribution school was CEB Manuel Bonilla in downtown Tegucigalpa. We gave out 772 bedkits to exuberant children brought by equally happy family members.

This day, as in some previous days, we interviewed several Mums about the quality of items in the bedkits: the mosquito net, blanket, sheets, pillow, school supplies, and clothes which are packed inside the mattress itself. SCAW's purpose here is to make sure that each items (every one purchased locally) is well-made and is something truly useful.

Interviewing parents and grandparents. From Honduras 2008 Photo Album

Extracting good information is not as easy as it sounds because the entire package is seen as a wonderful gift that the Mums find hard to criticize. Interviews in the urban areas tend to rate the mosquito net lower than in rural areas. The blanket gets high ratings - which seems odd to us as it is very thick and heavy and we suffer from the heat rather than the cold here. However, our home visits show that the blanket is very well used by all the family.

Yesterday we visited the small rural plant where the blankets are made.

Inspection of small factory that makes SCAW bedkit blankets. From Honduras 2008 Photo Album

They are produced by a needle-punch felt method which compresses material produced from recycled rags. This is followed by a heating process during which polyester is added which helps the bonding. The final thick, coated, blanket is heavy and very durable. We took a piece home with us and found that it washed by hand and dried well.

We mentioned home visits a couple of reports ago. These were homes of last year's bedkit recipients. They were located in a barrio of homemade dwellings, on the side of a clay hill at the top of 90 steps and a climb up a steep path. As we were coming down, we passed an 89-year-old man on his way up.

The homes were interesting. In some ways they were like cliff dwellings being on the edge of a steep slope. In other ways they were like WWI trenches being dug back into the clay.

From Honduras 2008 Photo Album

One family was an older couple — perhaps grandparents — and a boy about eight years old. It was clear that all three slept on last year's mattress under last year's blanket. One Mum in the interviews told us that all five of her children would sleep on the mattress: sleeping across it.

The kids here know two things for sure about Canada: 1) it is cold, and 2) Honduras beat Canada 2:1 in the recent World Cup match. They are waiting gleefully for the return match which will be held here. Soccer is a common language for all here: rich and poor, rural and urban, men and women.

I think that we are in a rural area tomorrow.

Peter Adams
for the SCAW Honduras team

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