A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

The road that convinced me to get out and walk Before we left Canada in January, Cuso International asked us to watch a 90-minute video presentation on health concerns put together by Dr. Mark Wise, Cuso's doctor in residence. He listed what seemed like a hundred different health problems to watch out for in our international placements, from malaria and dengue fever to chagas and rabid dogs. He ended it with a humorous little lecture noting that even if we couldn't be bothered to wear mosquito repellent - even if we insisted on patting stray dogs -  at the very least we should always use a seatbelt when riding in a vehicle, because car accidents are by far the most common bad things to happen to Cuso volunteers. I think back on his advice with a rueful smile whenever I'm jouncing along any of the truly terrible roads in Honduras. If only it were that easy, Dr. Wise. Sure, I do up my seatbelt if I happen to be sitting in the front seat of somebody's vehicle. B...

My new best friends: Nelson Rodriguez, right, the man doing the work at Angelitos; and Ovidio Mayorga of Casa Constructor, where I just bought $2500 worth of materials Sometimes you just have to sit back and wonder how the heck you got yourself into something. I had one such moment at about 8 p.m. last night, shortly after a halting phone conversation in Spanish with a plumbing contractor trying to sort out how and when I would be paying for the materials he needed to build new bathrooms and replace the water system at a rundown children's home here in Copan. I've lived a fine, long life without ever feeling the need to do home renovations. I know nothing about plumbing, water systems, urinal sturdiness or bombas , the mysterious and apparently pricey pumps that shoot water from cistern to holding tank to bathroom in countries like this one. I've never considered what kind of ceramic tile I like in a bathroom, or whether the grout should be white or black. Up until f...

I'm saying goodbye to a dear old friend tonight, who died in the early hours of the morning in Victoria.  I went looking just now for some photos of Dyhan from the summer of 2007, the year a group of us had a magical four-day camping trip at Cowichan Lake, and was instantly reminded of why I liked her so much. We met in the mid-2000s, when I first started to get to know some of the people living in the margins in Victoria. We stayed in touch right up until I left for Honduras in January - not in any kind of organized fashion, but bumping into each other at least three or four times a year for long enough to do a quick catch-up and share some  laughs.  Dyhan was what you'd call "larger than life." The photos from Cowichan Lake show her lounging by the campfire in an evening gown, a scene I remember from that summer with much fondness. Such style -  perched on a log in her gown and her heels, flicking her boa at the smoke. Man, that was a good camping trip. I...

A Tegucigalpa activist at a protest against the rising number of murders of Honduran women. Photo: Reuters Almost 2,300 women have been murdered in Honduras in the last eight years, a fairly clear signal that the country has a problem. But the statistics from the last four years are the most alarming. Murders of women skyrocketed in 2008, from 176 the year before to 569. Up until that point, roughly 200 Honduran women were murdered every year. But ever since that jump four years ago, the annual rates have doubled to around 400. What’s going on? As with so many other things in Honduras, it’s impossible to tell. Murder is disturbingly common in the country – just to put the femicide rate into perspective, the murder rates for men in Honduras are more than 18 times higher. But with 90 per cent of the murders are unsolved, so there’s no way to draw any conclusion other than that the country really needs to get a grip. Nor is there sufficient public information to help a worrie...

Classroom windows at Copan's largest school Want a project? I've got a thousand of them. Something about being a gringa in a country for whom gringo-ness summons images of money just seems to bring people running with ideas for how you can help. And they're great ideas. I visited Escuela Juan Ramon Cueva in Copan Ruinas the other day and had to agree with the teacher that the place really could use a little gringo attention. A thousand students attend the school every day, and all that wear and tear is taking its toll. The roof is falling in on a couple of classrooms, and the big tin techo that shelters the courtyard where the kids play is riddled with holes and broken bits. It would cost about $1,500 to put a new roof over the courtyard. That's nothing for a visiting group of Americans or Canadians looking to do a good deed, which is how much of the school got built in the first place. (A Rotary Club plaque hangs outside the bathrooms.) Not long before this ...

A Czech proverb: You live a new life for every new language you speak.  Now that I'm finally getting a handle on this business of learning Spanish, I couldn't agree more. Cuso International really took a chance on me when they brought me to Honduras with what can only be described as seriously rudimentary Spanish skills. And for that I will always be in their debt. Of all the things I appreciate about this interesting new life, what I love the most is the worlds that are opening up to me because I'm learning another language. It hasn't been easy. Despite being immersed in an all-Spanish environment for the last six months, I still need a Spanish-English dictionary close at hand at all times. I have to spend at least 10 minutes a day reading out loud from the San Pedro newspaper or a Spanish novel to sharpen my ear and my pronunciation.  I still flip through the absolutely essential Barron's 501 Spanish Verbs daily, checking up on some of the trickier conj...

One of the things I don’t expect to get used to about life in a poor country is witnessing suffering without being able to do much about it. No country is free of suffering, of course. Abuse, isolation, cruelty, hunger – there’s nowhere in the world that gets a free pass on such things. But at least in countries like Canada and the U.S., there’s some organization or government body that you can protest to, some cage to rattle on behalf of whatever suffering person or animal has got your attention. Not here. Yesterday morning, for instance, I came across a bony, sick horse while on one of my bird rambles in the hills. She had several festering sores on her back that were covered in flies, which she couldn’t even brush away because her tail was snarled around a big thorny stick she’d picked up while wandering through the bushes. Back in the city where I came from, I can think of five or six different groups I could phone to do something about a sick, abandoned horse. Victoria...

It's a happy, happy day - not only did I just meet with a real live albanil just now, but we went up to the Angelitos Felices children's home and actually did a tour of the disastrous bathrooms I'm hoping to fix up. I was griping rather heavily in my last post about the impossibility of finding an albanil - a mason, the trade that does bathroom work here in Honduras because everything's made out of concrete. But a North Carolina fellow who is with Paramedics for Children and his Copan-connected employee Marco Tulios came through today, introducing me to Nelson Rodriguez. The four of us went up to Angelitos to take a look at what's needed, which turns out to be total renos in the two bathrooms and a big new water tank on the roof so that the home has an adequate supply. Nelson supervised the bathroom renos at one of the big schools in Copan with 1,000 students, and vows he knows how to build a bathroom that's built to last. And that's exactly what Angeli...

Everyone who has lived in a foreign country warns you of the challenges of adjusting to a different culture. I'm living that right now, stuck in the incomprehensible process of looking for someone to do repairs at the children's home I'm involved with. I know things get done here in Honduras, because I see them happening. But how you make them happen - ah, now there's the question. At least a dozen men have been occupied for weeks building a massive and intricate rock wall around a house near my workplace. They look like they know what they're doing. Every day I see a constant flurry of construction activity in the centre of Copan Ruinas - buildings coming down, new ones going up, renovations all over the place. And virtually any male Copaneco I've met in my six months here knows how to do basic home repairs or even fix his own vehicle. So yes, this place has skilled workers. But can I get any of them to call me? Can I get anyone even just to tell me the n...

Lunch at the pool yesterday, courtesy of Charrissa I've always known there were exceptional young people doing volunteer work in the challenged countries of the world, but it's been heartening to see so many of them in action here in Copan Ruinas. Like me, a lot of them have ended up helping out at the children's guardaria here in Copan, where about 40 children are cared for in rough conditions (some live there, others are in day care). I recently met three young Americans who stumbled upon Angelitos Felices last year when they were on holiday here and then came back this summer for several weeks specifically to volunteer their time at the home every day. Another fellow from Stockton, Calif. was here in early June doing the same thing, overseeing a small construction project at Angelitos in an attempt to rectify at least some of the many structural problems the place has. The young woman who introduced me to Angelitos four months ago, Emily Monroe, is a particular f...

The young woman walks this dirt road twice a day, 90 minutes each way. She carries her nine-month-old baby in her arms while her two other children - seven and four - follow behind. Seven days a week, they walk from their mud house in La Pintada to the park in Copan Ruinas, where they sell corn husk dolls to tourists  for a dollar apiece. It's a tough way to make a living. On a really good day, the family might sell 10 dolls. But the woman says there are many days when she doesn't sell any. She not only has to contend with the struggling tourist economy in Copan, but compete with all the other women and children from her village who walk to the park every day as well to sell their own corn husk dolls. Life is hard for the poor in any developing country. But in the second-poorest country in the Western hemisphere, it's brutal. People work long hours for little money, and in many cases start and end each day with walks of two hours or more just to get to their work site. ...