One hundred ways to use caña.

It's been quite some time since we wrote about anything particularly Honduran. Since about a year ago, everything around here started seeming, well, normal. We used to write about, let's say, a Guatemalan market we shopped at, or all of the exotic tropical plants surrounding our house here in Honduras. But all those things have become normal, regular, average [well, maybe not quite average]. My point is, if we still wrote about such things, it would be similar to a Wisconsin resident writing about going shopping at Walmart and passing some maple trees on the way [oh, and having a bratwurst for lunch]. 

What I'm trying to say is this: something Honduran happened! I mean, something we hadn't experienced before. We had the chance to spend a morning with one of my English students and her family up on a beautiful mountain, watching about thirty men [all related] process the caña that they'd just harvested. In case you're unfamiliar with caña, it also has an English name: sugar cane. Here's a nice photo of some chopped caña, ready to be turned into one of many different caña products. 

Now, I could probably spend 3 hours talking about all the stuff that was happening with the caña while we were there [that's how long it took us to figure out what was going on...], but I'll make it as short and sweet as possible. 

This is a view of the operation from afar. Notice the oxen, the guy following the oxen to get them to keep moving [must be dizzy!], the man feeding the caña into the machine from the pile to his left. Meanwhile, younger boys are using burros to go collect more caña. 

 Here's a close-up. The barrel is used to collect the juice that the machine squeezes out from the caña. The kid takes the leftover caña and puts in on the "used" pile a few feet away. 

The juice from the barrel gets put into these two boiling bins- one is for the stuff that has boiled as long, so it's thinner. The other one has been boiled a bit longer and is on its way to becoming caña honey. 

A fun byproduct of the boiling caña juice is the foam that collects on the top. It's like drinking a sweet foam [well, it's not really LIKE drinking a sweet foam, it actually IS drinking a sweet foam]. The men called the foam Cachaza, but I've asked other Hondurans and they don't seem to recognize the word. Also, if you google "cachaza", you get results for some type of Brazilian liquor. The actual translation of "cachaza" is something along the lines of "a laid-back attitude". So, the name remains a mystery. 

Here, the men are using a big paddle to thicken the already boiled juice. Then, they bottle it as "caña honey". 

After being stirred around for a while, the stuff gets really thick. Then, it gets placed into molds to make little [or big!] candies. The interesting part about this is that there are a ton of bees everywhere during this process, and many of them get stuck in the candy. Nobody seemed to concerned, though... 

After drying the molds in the sun, the candy is ready to be extracted. If you look closely, you can see the little squares in the bin.

Here's Andrew and our little guy, Edgar, enjoying the sweetness of some of the extra candy that the guys took out for us to eat instead of putting it in the molds. 

And, finally, this guy is doing some sort of awesome artsy thing with the candy to make it into taffy. For some reason, they call this "the rooster", which was pretty much the most confusing part of the day. 

Coffee Cure

This morning, Essa, our beloved street dog, had her second seizure since we've known her. As traumatic as it is for me to watch her seize, at least I knew what was going on this time. This afternoon, she's back to her normal self, staring out the window at guatusas.

Fortunately, one of Andrew's students has a solution to Essa's seizure problem. After Andrew told his kids that Essa had a seizure today, he participated in the following dialogue with one of his students:

Student: "Give it coffee!"
Andrew: "Huh?"
Student: "Coffee. My neighbor's dog had seizures and they gave it coffee."
Andrew: "Really?"
Student: "Yes, but with agua pura. And NO SUGAR!"

So there you have it. The coffee solution. Keep in mind, we live in a place where 3 year-olds drink coffee (although it's usually rather weak NesCafe).

Update

Well, it's been quite awhile since we've been on here, so I thought I'd throw a little update out into the world. We spent 3 weeks over the holiday season spending time with family and checking out the job situation in New Orleans. As it turns out, there's an awesome job situation. Andrew had some pretty good interviews with a few schools, and I was accepted into teachNOLA, the Teach for America-esque alternative teaching certification program for New Orleans.

So, if all goes as planned, we'll be moving ourselves back to New Orleans in the summer. All of this is very exciting, but being someone who always overanalyzes my life choices, now is the time for me to start freaking out about the little time we have left here. That being said, I'm leaving you all right now in favor of going for a run through the idyllic mountain valley that I can only take advantage of for a few more months.

Happy new year to all of you! This year, do something you're terrified of doing. I bet it'll feel awesome.