Brandon Kidd Photography Blog

I had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend.. One of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions is taking photos of all the chaos on Cypress street in Placencia. We shut the street down, clear out all the cars and set up for one MASSIVE Thanksgiving feast and party!! Kristin and I have been helping volunteer on Cypress street the last 2 years.. We help lead a little bible study for all the children on Tuesday nights while the parents go to the adult bible study.. However since the attention span of most of the kids is about 5 seconds we end up running around and playing a ton of games.. I def get my workout every week from it! Most of the families on Cypress are pretty large and all have several kids. When we first started going you could really see the craving for attention in their actions.. So it has been our joy to be able to just love on all these little guys and give them the attention they deserve. Its so cool to be able to see the transformation that has taken place and is continuing to take place in the community over the past 2 years. Just incredible!

Last year I think we served almost 700 meals.. this year we wanted to go even bigger.. It was going to take a lot of coordinating and planning but Letty and Savana from Lot 318 were up for the challenge.  Here is Letty laying down the rules for the day..

The girls of Lot 318..

There is always a bunch of fun activities for the kids, face painting, crafts, bounce house, foosball, pop corn machine.. all kinds of fun things to keep them entertained..

Part of the festivities include a free clothing drive where all the attendees are able to take home clothes for themselves and their family..

This is my favorite part of the day.. seeing the joy and excitement in all these little faces.. its such a blessing to witness..

The food prep..

Even the little guys got dressed for the occasion

We had a great turnout! In fact we beat last years mark!! we served over 1100 meals that day!! Praise God! Soo awesome! A HUGE speacial thanks to Greg Welburn with Summit Event Catering who donated all the meals that day! What a gift!

Another truly incredible thing to witness was seeing all the little ones serve.. understanding to help out others in need at such a young age truly warms my heart.

check out the turnout!! WOW!

Another cool thing was that we got 1000 boxes of love.. which have just some basic necessities as well as some staple food such as rice, beans and some other home products..

It was just such an awesome event and was so thankful to be apart of it again this year.. I already cant wait for it next year.. but atleast I get to see all of these little guys every Tuesday! I hope you all had a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving weekend as well!

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!

This past week I was in Honduras with Living Water Int’l drilling a well to provide clean drinking water to a village that was previously without. I posted only a few of the several thousand that I took!

For all of you who know me personally know that traveling, mission work and photography are a huge part of my heart and anytime you can combine all three, man my heart just explodes! This was the kick off to our new philanthropic campaign and I just wanted to say thank you to all of our couples who chose Living Water as the charity they wanted to support. These pictures are for you to enjoy as well as see what your contribution has done and how you have made an impact on the little village of La Hilaria, Honduras. I also bring back many thank you’s from both young and old and they give you all their blessings. Thank you  for your help to make this happen.

A little background information that I didnt know before I left was that Honduras is the second most impoverished country next to Haiti in all of South and Latin America. This poverty reached a new level after Hurricane Mitch struck in 1999 and caused severe destruction to infrastructure and agriculture. The country still hasn’t fully recovered from all the devastation. 

I was also really excited to go to Honduras because this was my first time down in Latin America. I always love an opportunity to tune up my spanish.

La Iglesia (Church)

The main source of revenue is agriculture including predominately bananas, oranges, and pineapple. The little village of La Hilaria is completely supported off of their 10 km orange grove.  Everybody in the town works in the orange grove. There is actually no specific ownership. Everyone in the village shares in it equally and works the land equally as well. School is split in two shifts, 8-1 and 1-6.  My buddy christian below works from 5:30 -12:30 pm, then goes to school from 1-6 pm, then works on homework until bedtime at 8:30 and does the same thing the next day. Id say a solid days work for a 11 year old. Typical with almost every kid in this village. 

El Caballero  (Gentleman)

The universal sport! Man these kids can play! We brought down several new balls.

There are 8 tribes in Honduras. Not saying that each of these kids represents one tribe but just a look at the diversity of people. 

 

The school was centrally located in the community so Living Water saw it best fit to drill right in the school so it would not only service these 200+ kids but could lend water the entire community. 

Now its go time! Drillings on! Living Water is based out of Houston so I got my fair share of cultural enlightenment from both the Hondurans as well as the Texans

 

Yup thats right! Yours truly getting my rough neck on!  

The bottle Emillio (the guy in the hat as well as drilling guru) is holding is the water that these kids were washing dishes, clothes and drinking with. You can see after we drilled and taped into a local aquifer you can see the progression of how much cleaner the water got. By the time we were done drilling, pumping and purifying, you could pretty much bottle up the water and sell it on the shelves. 

We dug 70 feet down and ended up with this….

A lifetime of clean and pure drinking water. Right now is dry season so anything that is producing water will definitely still produce water during wet season!

SOOO AWESOME!!

 

A shot from the plane ride back into LAX, a beautiful way to end such a beautiful trip!