A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

This is going to be a year of firsts for me - like this one, getting my first story published in a Texas newspaper.   While my role with the Comision de Accion Social Menonita is primarily to help them with communications here in Honduras, I figure it can't hurt to put those English-language skills of mine to work sometimes to spread the word about CASM a little farther afield. I'm posting the story below, just in case you don't like links. It's one more piece in the puzzle of what I actually do down here in Honduras, which I admit I'm still working on understanding myself. I do like the chance to jump into plain old reporting once in a while. Copan Ruinas, Honduras- The big hole in the ground was two feet deep and nothing but dirt when the volunteers from First Christian Church in Tyler got their first look at it March 10. By the time they headed home to Texas on March 18, it was three feet deeper and ready for concrete to be poured. And the 900 people li...

A street market at its most basic - one guy and a few vegetables Perhaps it's the human condition to seek routine. I've spent much of my life on the run from routines I felt stuck in, yet at the same time I settle quickly and comfortably into new ones. We've been in Copan for 10 weeks now, not nearly long enough to know much about this complex country. But certain things are at least a little familiar now, and I'm welcoming the small routines that allow the days to pass in slightly more predictable ways rather than as relentless blasts of new and baffling developments. I have two regular lunch-time "bird walks" now, for instance, and know that one leads to the trio of magnificent crested jays near the Hacienda San Lucas while the other takes me to the arid fields and grosbeaks around the water reservoir for La Laguna. When a shadow passes over me as I walk, I know that it's almost certainly a vulture - possibly a turkey vulture, more likely a black....

The issues of Canada have drifted from my mind strikingly fast now that I'm in Honduras, but it all came rushing back to me this morning when I read the judgment handed down by the Court of Appeal in Ontario on Canada's sex work laws. Here's the link  to the decision if you want to read it in full, but I've put the meat of the ruling down below for those who prefer a summary. You can't go around declaring victory too quickly when it comes to court rulings, because this judgment is certainly going to end up in front of the Supreme Court of Canada given the federal government's position on this issue to date. Still, each new court ruling adds weight to the argument for decriminalization, and reminds Canadians again and again that it is against our own Constitution to treat sex workers so disgracefully. That communication for the purposes of prostitution remains illegal is unfortunate, as that means that it's still illegal for sex workers to advertise their ...

As I've griped probably one too many times (in Spanish, the verb is quejarse), learning about your workplace when nobody speaks the same language as you is really difficult. That's why I like field trips so much - hopping into a vehicle with one of my co-workers with nary a clue as to where we're going or what we'll do when we get there. I just say yes to every opportunity and figure it will all add up to knowledge. Yesterday, the task was to deliver 25 giant sacks of chicken manure to campesinos in a little pueblo called San Geronimo. There are several dozen little pueblos in the hills around Copan Ruinas, often along roads that you or I would likely consider  rough hiking trails through the bush were we to encounter one in Canada. The road to San Geronimo was definitely in that category, requiring us to drive through a river, negotiate narrow little climbs that almost stalled out a 4x4, and steer around obstacles that included tire-eating ruts, scary dropoffs and ...

I don't think I can call this a crisis of faith that I'm having today, because I've never really been one for faith. Maybe there are religious journalists out there somewhere, but for me years of learning about the bad things that happen to good people (and vice versa) shook the faith right out of me. Still, I have a great appreciation for the good work done by people of faith, and up until today have not felt the urge to cry out, "Oh, come ON!" at the Monday-morning devotionals at my new workplace. In a country this religious, I feel  like I'm participating in the culture by attending the devotionals, and I usually find them quite sweet sessions that bond my co-workers in a much more meaningful way than a garden-variety staff meeting ever could. But today, something got to me. The topic was harmless enough - a reflection on God as artist - but I found myself squirming at the heartfelt statements of my co-workers as they talked about their faith. Perhaps ...

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime. So goes the adage. Spend any time with producers in Honduras, however, and you soon see that if the lesson doesn’t also include helping the guy get his fish to market, he’s still got a big problem.   Honduras is an agricultural economy. Like farmers everywhere, the average Honduran trying to scratch a living from the earth is beset by all the usual trials and tribulations of farm life:  Not enough rain; too much of it; a hot year; a cold year; insects; tired soil.  But listening to the 20 or so producers at the two-day workshop we went to this week in Siguatepeque, it became pretty clear that Hondurans also face tremendous problems getting their goods to market. Not only are they unable to afford the costs of moving their goods, there often isn’t a distribution network anyway, let alone a co-ordinated plan for finding markets. In my past days as a traveller on a two-wee...

This family relies on pre-schoolers to flog corn-husk dolls to tourists How do you help a country that has so many problems? Big, big question. I suspect I'll spend much of my two years here trying to figure that one out. My particular project with the Comision de Accion Social Menonita will probably click along quite nicely, but you can't live in a place with so much poverty and trouble without wishing you could do a whole lot more than that. (Today's headline: Half of the 90 murders a month in San Pedro Sula are committed by kids under 18.) When I first arrived, I was very enthusiastic about figuring out ways to connect people I know in Canada with Honduran kids who could be sponsored to attend private schools. The public school system is atrocious - giant classes, no supplies, and militant teachers who walk off the job so much (for good reason - some of them haven't been paid in months) that students typically get just 50 days of school in a year. For maybe $1...

When I was first contemplating what life would be like as a Cuso International volunteer in Honduras, I really wanted to read a blog post from someone in the country who could explain the day-to-day stuff of the place - not so much the big cultural issues, because Cuso does a pretty good job of preparing you for that, but things like buying groceries, disposing of garbage, staying healthy. What would it feel like to live in this new place? Unfortunately, that information has to be really specific, because it's different for every country, every region, every town. I did talk to a couple volunteers in Honduras who were very helpful in getting a broad sense of the place, but one lived in a big city and the other lives in a town three hours away in the mountains, which might as well be a foreign land when you're talking about the need for highly specific local intel. So for all the future volunteers who might one day be contemplating a placement in Copan Ruinas, Honduras, he...

You find yourself thinking about cocaine a lot in a place like this. Blame it on the daily murder reports in the Honduran papers, not to mention the abundance of high-end, shiny new four-by-fours in little towns with no obvious avenues of work that would provide for such vehicular splendor. While searching for greater understanding about the business end of things I came across a 2009 report from the UN with some excellent information about how the cocaine industry works. (And wouldn't you know it, the farmers get stiffed in this business too!) U.S. vice-president Joe Biden has been splashing around Honduras in the last few days, and the newspapers have been full of his comments urging Honduras not to listen to Guatemala's talk about decriminalizing illicit drugs like cocaine. Rather than have a real plan for easing the tremendous violence going on in the countries that supply the vast cocaine markets in the U.S. and Europe, Biden is promising to fix things by reducing re...

Downtown Copan Ruinas, blessedly siren-free I’ve now been away from B.C. for longer than any period of my life. OK, it’s only been eight weeks, but surely that’s enough time to muse on what I miss and don’t miss about the place. The last time I was away for (almost) this long – two years ago when we travelled to Vietnam and Thailand for six weeks - the thing I missed the most was not having access to a musical instrument. Fortunately, I brought my accordion with me for this journey, so no worries there.  Overall, I think I’m adjusting nicely to life in a tropical country, something I suspect I’ve been hankering for since I was six and first discovered the glorious feeling of hot sun on my skin while on a family vacation in Penticton. I do miss some things. But not everything. Let’s start with what I miss: My family . I’ve never lived further than a few hours from all my immediate family members, and even though I grumbled now and again that I wished it was otherwise, t...

Children head home after a day harvesting coffee Whether you’re a kid in Canada or Honduras, your school is going to try to convince you to eat better. I attended a workshop for teachers this week here in Copan Ruinas that was introducing a seven-series program for primary kids that was all about food. But that’s where the similarities end. While the Canadian efforts are aimed at stopping our kids from getting any fatter, the Honduran course is trying to stave off malnutrition. Listening to the Honduran grou p outlining the themes of the nutrition course was yet another reminder of just how tough things are in this struggling country. Like so many other countries, Honduras is a signatory on at least a dozen big international agreements guaranteeing this or that right for the children of the country. But it’s all just words on paper. In the second-poorest country in the Americas, bad things happen to kids every day, and going hungry isn’t even the worst of it. Honduras has ...