I think it’s called African Queen, and it’s got Humphrey Bogart and the elder Hepburn floating forever down a river in Africa? And they hate each other at first, but in the course of all their misadventures and shared danger, they come to respect, and finally love each other? And then they end up in this vast, trackless marsh, beset by a trillion bugs, dodging the Nazis and slowly dying of thirst, baking in the equatorial sun?

That actually got away from me. I remembered more of the movie than I really needed to relate, to get my point across.

Today we headed out into the delta, trying to catch a special kind of prawn or shrimp or something, called La Gustina. The divers, the injured ones whose stories we’re down here to record, are starting a co-op with the local government’s help, to catch and sell these things. It’s a really cool idea, and in a few years there’s hope that this new catch will replace the lobster as a source of income for these Honduran divers, whose livelihoods are normally over at about 30.

There were seven of us in the boat, which had no canopy and was indeed much smaller than we had been led to believe, and we shoved off at about 10 this morning. If you’ve never been in the tropics at 10 in the morning, know that the Fire Orb, warm perhaps in Auburn and Birmingham, makes its presense known here in a manner indisputable. Thank the Lord for sunscreen! We tooled around, dodging logs and tiny islands, fishing for hours for La Gustina. We found them, the tricky buggers, at close to 12:30, and took the pictures we needed. Stuff’s coming together nicely, praise the Lord!

I think they’re about to shut this little webernet cafe down, so I’m going to close… We head out tomorrow at 3:00 by way of the same dirt airstrip, so we definitely appreciate your prayers!

More as event (and internet access) warrant,

Te amo,

Paul

In Honduras… At an internet cafe, so I must be brief.

Obviously we’re alive, and we’re actually doing pretty well… Landed on a dirt strip in Bruce Laguna today, totally Indiana Jones stuff. Started collecting footage for the project, and had many adventures. Let’s see: Watched fisherpeople fishing while smoking kind bud (the fisherpeople, not us), saw a giant crocodile skull that some guy had collected from its former owner with a spear, witnessed iguana hunters bringing in their catch, Stephen attempted to communicate with a Spanish-speaking parrot, and finally found (thanks be to God!) a hotel with working air conditioning and an internet connection at the end of the world.

We’ll post pictures when we can, but for now make pictures in your mind. Like they did in the olden times.

Te amo mucho, adios!

Paul and I are sitting at the Birmingham airport with the fine folks from Missions Unlimited waiting to board our flight to Houston, then on to Honduras. We’ll be there all week documenting the distribution of P.E.T.s or, Personal Energy Transports (wheel chairs that won’t break!) and putting together a presentation for M.U. that they can use to help raise funds to continue building them. We’ll be attempting to update the blog frequently (web providing) so stay tuned…and, should we not have internet, have a fantastic week…we’ll be back next sunday!

Hello friends. Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the first Everyday People show this past weekend! We had a great time, and of course, the music was fantastic. Thanks again to Stewart Vann, Jeanette Brabston, Alex Mitchell, Bekah Fox and Roger Eason for coming out to play, sing and support Bedouins International. (Big thanks to Roger for putting it all together and to Urban Standard for hosting the event for us!)

We also had our shirts on sale for the first time! We hand-screened all of them, so each one is unique.

If you would like to buy one, either click here or you may send your check for $10 payable to Bedouins International at 1710 2nd Ave N #501 Birmingham, AL 35203. Be sure to include your size, color preference and mailing address!

Thanks again for your support!

I updated the main website over the weekend with some new content for you guys. Check out the “Partnerships” section to find projects we’ve recently completed for Time Square Church, Benei Aor, Casa Hoga MAMI and HIPH. We’ve also updated the “Purpose” section with some more current stuff. Go Check it out.
Also, check out the Caribbean Gold site to find out what’s going currently with that project. We now have 10 photos available for purchase in limited editions. Check it out, maybe even buy one of those beautiful prints.
So that’s a little taste for you of the exciting things going on in the world that is Bedouins International.