I had the amazing opportunity and privilege to go to Honduras again with Living Water Int’l. Living Water is such an amazing company and I support them any way I can. This was a special trip constructed to repair a bunch of previous wells drilled right along the coast in a remote city called Brus Laguna. Saks Fifth Ave has donated a lot of money to Living Water and has put in several water wells in this specific area in Honduras.
Water wells usually need maintenance about every 10-15 years but this area had proven to be problematic with its continuous flooding. When water rises above the well reservoir it gets inside the well and brings in all the water from the outside and mixes with the clean water from the aquifer. Thus bringing other elements into the equation like iron that corrode the steel pipes and make them virtually functionless. Living Water wanted to go out and fix this problem immediately by changing out all the pipes to stainless steel as well as increasing the hight of the well reservoirs. There was 15 wells to fix in 4 days time with some of the wells reaching 140 feet deep so needless to say it was going to be quite a mission! Oh and no cars.. or electricity for that matter 
just a couple hours a day after the sun had set. We are talking pretty remote here… As you will see very shortly.
Well Saks Fifth wanted somebody to document the area and the benefit these wells have given to the community so Living Water asked me if I wanted to be that somebody! Boy was I thrilled.. Especially since literally it was the only week I had no weddings booked til December I knew that it was God ordained fo sho!
As you will see with the first few pictures you get a feel for how remote of a place I am talking about.. prop plane that only flies in and out once on Monday and Friday.. so you can guess how much time we had to finish the wells
Check out the landing strip…
Oh and the airport.. Haha yup literally no airport.. just a dirt strip and some barbed wire fence with an open gate..
Immediately I knew that this was going to be the mission of a life time.. I love to be hands on and get dirty as well as document all the different people and walks of life.. This was totally different even from the last trip here just 2 months ago.
What I first noticed was how all the people were working with just their hands… there are almost virtually no machines at all.. It was almost like traveling back in time to a more primitive era. Even the dialect was far removed from Spanish the Native Language of Honduras. It was called Moskitia which was a very interesting mix of spanish, english, and same native american indigenous tongue. Very cool to hear.. difficult to converse.. but very cool to hear.
All the houses are lifted up on stilts for when the wet season comes and flooding starts.
As I said before that Brus is located on the coast so its easy to believe that the entire community’s life source is mainly derived from the ocean.
A couple of fishermen.
Another thing I noticed was that every person.. no matter the age or gender was responsible for different tasks no matter big or small.. As you can see this little guys responsibility ;)
G-ma’s choppin’ wood
Cookin’ something.. mystery meat..?
A few of my fav portraits..
Daily life..
I had an awesome opportunity and was invited into one of the homes as you see on the top right of the picture bellow.. I wanted to share this woman’s home with all of you.. Notice the Plasma’s, Satellite and entertainment system.. oh wait…. or maybe the couches… beds…?
Just a couple of blankets on the wood floor is suffice for her, her 2 daughters and 2 sons.. and thats it.. Something to think about thats for sure..
more portraits
How sweet is this guys hat..
And now for the main reason we were down there.. this is how these people get their water without the use of water wells…. dig a hole in the ground and save it from whenever it rains.
You can see the color of the water.. thus clearly illustrating the desperate need for clean drinking water..
Fixing the old wells.. You can see how quickly they got corroded and just destroyed.. some of the wells are only a couple years old.. The brown water coming out is actually supposed to be the clean water coming from the aquifer.
So after 4 days of hard lifting and about 15 miles a day of carrying supplies, piping and generators I’d say we worked up quite an appetite. Beans and rice for every meal every day was wonderful dont get me wrong, but not quite cutting it for the energy. We took a canoe type boat through the lagoon trying to find cocodrillo (crocodile) and were unsuccessful.. However thanks to John (one of the guys on our trip) and his 2 small fishing rods we caught us our dinner that night.. whaahhlahh! I caught 4 of these bad boys… SOOOO GOOOOOOD!!!!!!!
Well believe it or not we actually finished all 15 wells that we were sent there to complete praise God!
And now my absolute favorite part of the trip to show.. Honestly it makes me cry every time I look at these images… Part of the sanitation process for these water wells is to flush them out with a deisel generated pump that helps get all the bad stuff out. Once all the bad stuff gets flushed out its just pure clean drinking water.. well since we still had some gas left in the water pump, and since these water wells never go dry, we left it on and hooked up a hose to let the kids play with the water..
Keep in mind that some of these kids have never seen clean drinking water let alone tasted it and now they had a huge “Super Soaker” just pounding them with amazingly clean and pure water.. Clean water is something to take very seriously, a scarce and very valuable commodity not to be taken for granted.
What you are witnessing is completely and totally unheard of for them..
They were having so much fun Ryan and I just couldn’t resist!!
Thanks R.O for taking this last shot and not getting my camera soaked! Seriously one of the best trips I have ever been on!! SO INCREDIBLE!
