Family updates

Actually, we spent the day at the farm having a dinner with the local leaders and neighbors.

The driver is busy hauling chicken manure but came later to spend the night (for our safety, we usually have him stay overnight with us. There have been local kidnappings of business people, and we do take precautions. There are workers on the farm, but they are not local and they come and go, and the family in charge only has one adult man with kids and a wife.

Our house has locks, bars on the windows, and we always take a feisty watch dog. However, we cannot legally own a gun, so if anyone broke in, I guess I'd have to hit him with my 6 lb purse.


On the way to the farm we passed six Army guys in Santa Cruz, and there is still an Army check point two villages past there. Looks like they are after the NPA. The problem is that we see reports like this one....those suspected of NPA sympathy get killed, by unknown people.
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Update LINK mentions she wants helicopters...
When we were at the farm, there was a helicopter overhead, but not a Huey, just a small one like you see news men using to check traffic.
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One side effect of this is the need for private security guards. There are usually police on the streets and the palenke, but the fancy westernized shops have one in every aisle. This increases the overhead and therefore the price of everything.

The middle class is building houses in guarded/walled communities for safety. We have bought a lot in one of them, but not started to build yet.
We still live in the town center.
Here everyone has a couple dogs to discourage thieves.

If we ever finish building the "training center" we'll probably have to hire a full time security guard at night.