Confessions of a Travel Junkie

Lago Atitlan, Guatemala, Feb 2013 during our trip to HN

Hi, my name is Michael Wolfe and I am a travelholic. I made my first trip to Guatemala in 1964 when I was 6 months old in the back of a VW bus. As a child I traveled often with my family around the US, Canada, Cuba, Mexico and Guatemala. In order to support my addiction I became a truck driver, roaming the United States for months at a time. Even after getting married I continued to travel, taking my family with me in the truck. Now I live in Honduras having driven here from Maine, but after being here for 8 months and although I still love it here, I am feeling the old addiction to travel starting to work in me. I think that this "illness" is inherited from my father who is also a travelholic, so I'm not sure I am fully responsible for my actions.

Costa Esmeralda, Mexico, Jan 2013

I am glad that I began blogging, if for no other reason than that I go back from time to time and relive some of the high points of our travels to Honduras. But living on past accomplishments is a scary place to be. It may be a comfortable, complacent place to be, but who wants that.

Recently a  friend of ours, fellow traveler and adventurer Rachel Demming and her family, who we stopped and visited in Panajachel, Guatemala, shared in her blog, Discover, Share, Inspire, these same feelings. They started from Alaska, traveling as a family, with a final destination of the southern tip of South America. Somehow they got delayed in Panajachel....a place whose beauty would easily beguile any traveler in to staying for a day or two or a year or two. Anyway, reading her post made me realize that I too am beginning to feel the need to travel again.

It's not that I haven't been traveling. I have put almost 10,000 kilometers on the little pick up we bought in June, but after many trips to Naco, San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa it no longer counts as travel, just work. It's still good to be out and moving and of course driving here is always an adventure, but it lacks the aliveness I always feel when I am traveling in places I have never been.

So I can definitely feel a trip coming on. We do have a trip to visit the Mayan ruins in Copan planned soon and that may tide me over for a while, but......  Where would I go if I have the chance? Well, I may be traveling to China soon on business and that would be really cool, but I'm a "driver". I like travel most when I'm behind the wheel. Returning to Guatemala is a real possibility as I would like my family to experience more of this beautiful country. But, having been there already, I think that our way leads us south. Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.

Just a short trip, a fix for the travel junkie, a week or two. There's only two reasons we aren't in "la fiesta bus" today. Commitments to "normal" life and pets. It's hard enough to find someone to keep Tiger for us, but who's going to keep a donkey?

You may find this hard to believe, but even life in a foreign country can become mundane and normal...very quickly. Do you want to keep your edge? My advice is to stay moving, always stretching, never satisfied with "good enough". 

I turn 50

Me, looking through the piñata.

Yup, the big 50. In the States we throw over-the-hill parties. Here they celebrate 50 as an accomplishment...it's a big deal. Really. Of course I knew something was up, all the whispering and running off on secret missions, it wasn't to difficult to guess there was a party being planned.

Gaby, who is like a daughter to us, was in charge of the party planning along with Ahnalies and Reyna. Barbe, having just returned from Seattle two days before had got the ball rolling from there and let them have at it...and it was done beautifully. The party took place on a magnificent piece of property outside of Sigautepeque. The patio was decorated with balloons and streamers. When we arrived, Doña Reyna was busy cooking strips of meat over a charcoal grill and making tortillas. The smell of food filled the pine fresh air. My knew friend, Julio, brought fireworks he had made in his shop behind his house just to help me celebrate.

Friends from around Sigaut trickled in and the place began to fill up. One special visitor, who I was very surprised and moved to see arrive, was Mercedes' mother who had traveled all the way from Cerro Azul by bus just to be celebrate with me. We have a bi-monthly Bible study in her home in Cerro Azul, which by car is an hour away, and it meant more than I can express to see her there.

Below is a photo that has become quite famous in certain circles. Somehow I was tricked into believing that it was customary for the birthday person to lean in and take a bite out of the cake. I am so used to just participating unquestioningly in some very strange (to us) cultural practices...and being the good sport that I am...I leaned in to take a bite. Big mistake....you'd think after 50 years I would have been a bit wiser!

Tim and Kathee...caught red handed. They called it teamwork.

I have assured Tim and Kathee that I don't get mad...I get even... and that revenge is sweet, even sweeter than a Honduran birthday cake. Which is saying a lot.

Left with cake on my face.

Of course I was asked to give a speech. What I shared came from the bottom of my heart and with tears in my eyes. It was a passage from Mark 10:29 and 30 which has been in my thoughts a lot lately as I look at our life here. Peter has asked Jesus what he and the other disciples' reward will be for having left all to follow Him. Jesus replies with this promise, "Truly I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields..." (emphasis mine)

When we left Maine for Honduras we left all of those things Jesus listed. We left our parents and brothers and sisters,who we love and miss very much. We left a beautiful home on 55 acres...and we left all of these things to follow what we believed Jesus taught us to do in Scripture. We left not knowing what we were headed into. It seemed like we were for sure losing our life as we knew it. 

As I looked around the patio at all the people gathered there to help me celebrate a milestone in my life, I realized that God had, in less than eight months, fulfilled this promise in our lives. We have been given family and that in abundance. We have more children, especially the daughters we never had. We have a beautiful house to live in. I was celebrating my birthday on a most beautiful piece of land owned by some of our family. 

Here is something I am learning; there are some things that can only be learned by stepping out in faith and experiencing it first hand. You can read about something all your life, but until you do it you will never really know if' it's real or not. 

For some reason I believe, and have the hope that, this decade is going to be the most productive, the most joyful, the most fulfilling decade I have yet experienced. I'll let you know in another ten years if it is.

Some of my family.

PS. I know many of you have seen these pictures already on facebook, but they were such great photos I wanted to include them here. I also want to especially thank the Garcia Mendoza family for all the work they put into making the party a success.

Six Days in the Life of a Well Driller

Towards the end of August I wrote this post, Drilling for Water. In it I explain that NGF, our home church in Florida had donated enough money to drill one well. I chose Barrio Oriente for two reasons. The first reason is because families in Oriente only get water to their houses once every eight days or less and then only a pila full. The other reason is that our friends Allan and Nicole live there and are starting a new church and we felt this would be a good way to help them and the community.

There was a huge challenge to this project though. The well site was inaccessible by truck. No problem I am told, we'll use oxen.

Day 1,
We spend all day getting the rig and our Go and See Ministries trailer up to the well site.

The drill rig being towed in with oxen.

Day 2,
By noon, with the help of Tim Nelson, we have the rig set up, mud pits dug, Bentonite mixed and circulating and we begin drilling making, good progress for the first 40 ft .

Job site.

Day 3,
On day 2 we had found that standing all day in the hot sun was uncomfortable and so we bring our own portable shade.

Ben, operating the rig...in the shade

Day 4,
On day 3 we found plastic buckets turned up side down as chairs practical, but less than relaxing and so on day 4 we make a vast improvement to our union breaks, camp chairs.

Alexis mixing Bentonite, Trey supervising perched on bucket.

Thomas on break.

Day 5,
On day 4 we had  roasted "chorizos" on sticks over a fire our boy scout had helped build, but by day 5 we had moved up to gourmet hamburgers cooked over an open fire using the rusty lid of a 55 gallon drum as a frying pan ingeniously placed on a stand of green wooden stakes which wouldn't burn, a contribution from our Honduran watchman who had obviously done this a few times before.

The Men of Oriente and my crew.

Day 6,
The next logical step in getting really comfortable on our work site was to bring in a Coleman stove. That way we could cook fried egg sandwiches and beans for lunch.

Another great meal.

In the end our job site became very comfortable. The men from Oriente who would spend the night guarding the equipment found our trailer to be a great place to hang out during the evening rains and I suspect that they even slept in it instead of under their blue tarp tent. All in all it was a most enjoyable week; and for me, it was one of those unforgettable experiences that men live for. Machinery, the great outdoors, good food, good natured joking, good weather and good company. Having my sons, Ben and Thomas, working with me and being part of this was awesome. Having Trey, who we have come to love like a son, there too was especially cool. Alexis, my "ayudante" quickly fit in with us and put up with our constant teasing. We kept telling him that he was going to turn into a Gringo, "bien gordito" if he wasn't careful, mostly because he would eat so much for lunch that we were pretty sure he was gaining weight rapidly. Our mantra quickly became, "When you're __________ (fill in the blank i.e. tired, broke down, bored, stuck, etc.) eat!" This approach to everything never failed us.

The boys with new crew member Ahnalise lowering the test pump.

In the end, we drilled to 180 ft and put casing to about 75 ft. We were really unsure if the well was producing water or not, but as we began to bail the water from the well, we found that it was almost impossible to make any progress...a very good sign. We finally were able to get electricity run to the well and ran a submersible pump for several hours without pumping the well dry.

Thomas and Trey measuring GPM.

As of right now I am waiting on a trailer mounted air compressor to finish developing the well with. We will use it to blow all the water, or as much as we can, from the well in order to get out all the silt and mud that would otherwise plug up the pump. I am pretty confident that Oriente is going to have water!

A Boring Life?

It's a little after 2 am and I'm wide awake, well that may be an exaggeration, but I'm awake. I'm awake for the most part because our new 7 month old donkey Alfredo is awake and I think he's missing his mommy. He's clumping around the yard under my bedroom window ...do donkeys sleep at night?... making this very strange whistling sound that turns into what may some day be called manly braying, but right now sounds like he's in puberty and his voice is beginning to change. I mean, I don't really know if donkeys go through puberty, actually...I don't really know a whole lot about donkeys. So why is one outside my window tonight?

Alfredo and Tiger getting  acquainted.

See, I've always had a problem with impulsiveness and crazy ideas. That's why I typically won't go new car window shopping, or to the pound, or play the stock market (well, maybe) because things always seem like a really good idea at the time. I'm not like that in everything I do, thankfully. Business is serious business, deciding to move here to Honduras was a well thought through process over several years. But, the things that make life fun...and interesting....and enjoyable....and rewarding....and unique, that's a different story. And so Alfredo is here because I had this crazy idea of bringing people from all over Honduras and the United States together to help buy and share in this little donkey who needed a home.

And I'm so glad that there are at least 60 other totally crazy people out there who thought it would be wild and crazy to own part of a Honduran donkey too, and jumped at the chance.  

I had a conversation with a friend tonight on this topic. I told her that I refuse to live a boring life, a safe life, one without risks or fun moments. She completely agreed. I used to take life very seriously, and I still do in many ways, but the older I get the more I realize that life is also meant to be enjoyed. Life is meant to be lived, savored, not stored away or gulped down. A little adventure, a little risk, a big, greasy hamburger, a wrong turn, an impulsively generous gift from the heart, a sabbatical, a pet donkey...yeah, these things are the spice of life, the bacon in the BLT. Oh, yeah, now we're talkin'.

Live life to the fullest! Live life without regrets! Live in the moment, it's all we really have!

Buy a Donkey

Drawing by Benjamin Wolfe

The New Project Manager of the Honduras Spanish Institute

I want to take a moment to introduce you to the new Project Manager at the Spanish Language Institute here in Siguatepeque, HN. This is the language school we studied at last year. Currently, the school is located on the grounds of SEBCAH, a local Bible seminary.

Without a doubt, what makes this school so special are the teachers. Each of these women are unique and each of them really pour their hearts into their work and their students. Honestly, I have never seen a more dedicated, more caring group of people. Barbe and I love these girls immensely and they have become family to us.

Since this picture was taken, the school has grown and they have added several more teachers, including a young man. Because the number of students fluctuates, the school cannot promise full time work, but the teachers understand this, especially the newer ones. Delia, (back left) is la Directora and she, Mercedes and Reyna (back center and right) were all teachers with the Peace Corp before they pulled out of Honduras. 

Classes are typically "one on one instruction" although group settings can be arranged. Along with the classroom, the school also schedules trips into town to practice Spanish "on the streets" and is in the process of developing a missions oriented approach to these outings so that students can also serve the community as they practice Spanish.

Another thing that makes this school special are the students, and I mean that. We have had the privilege of meeting some exceptional people during our time here. Most of those who come are missionaries or missionaries in the making. I have been amazed, in particular, at the quality of the young people who come here. We have had the honor to welcome many of them into our home, our home fellowship group and our lives.

Oh yeah, about the new project manager...that would be me.

Alfredo the Donkey

Alfredo

This Alfredo thing has taken on a life of it's own. When I started our fundraiser to buy a burro for a buck I was kind of joking, but as the pledges for one dollar or 20 lempiras came rolling in I realized that this little guy had caught peoples attention and their imagination.

So now Alfredo has his own Alfredo the Donkey Fan Page on Facebook. I'm headed to Barrio Oriente to buy him tomorrow. He is costing us a little more than I had at first thought, but he is still a deal at $60 USD. If any of you would like to own him with us and become a "Fan of Alfredo" you can do so by sending one dollar to Michael Wolfe, PO Box 101, East Wilton, ME 04234 and then ask to join his fan page group on fb for updates. For all of you who have pledged towards his purchase, please be sure and send your dollar or find me here in Siguatepeque and hand deliver your 20 lempira. Those of you who are pledging dollars can also hand deliver those to me if you'd like to. We'd love to have you come down and meet Alfredo in person.

 

Alfredo is a young burro and runs all over Oriente. He is very friendly and VERY curious. He will make a great mascot for us here.