A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

You haven't really tested your inner fortitude until you've done a few Honduran meetings. I mean, we're talking a serious endurance test. Fresh from a three-day retreat for the non-profit I work for in Copan Ruinas, I'm newly reminded of the Honduran capacity to just hang in there at meetings and presentations that just go on and on. I even think the people here like it that way. I can't tell you the number of meetings I've been to here at which the fourth or fifth straight hour rolls around and things seem to be finally wrapping up, and just as I presume every participant is as twitchy, inattentive and restless as me, they launch into an enthusiastic question-and-answer session that keeps the meeting going for another hour or more. I found myself grousing quietly to one of my co-workers at the retreat that in Canada, our presenters believe that people need breaks every 90 minutes or their exhausted brains will go on presentation overload and they won'...

The doctor is in at Angelitos Felices I’ve known for a while now that accessing medical care was a challenge for the majority of Hondurans who have to rely on the public system. But it wasn’t until I put in a couple of days as an ad-hoc translator for a U.S. doctor in the villages this week that I fully understood that medical care is as good as non-existent for a whole lot of people. The doctor was part of a faith-based group out of Illinois and Tennessee who were here to build fuel-efficient stoves in three villages around Copan. She hadn’t planned on seeing patients, but word got out fast that there was a doctor among the group and she graciously agreed to see a few people. And they jumped at the chance. On Monday and Tuesday we were in Guarumal, Cabanas, a village of 15 families, and at least nine of those families were in the lineup within 10 minutes of the doctor pulling up a chair on the patio outside a resident’s house. I suspect the other six families would have b...

My boss Merlin Fuentes demonstrates a  miniature version of a fuel-efficient fogon at the Feria Ambiental Oh, what a week it has been - freshly back from a fast holiday in Las Vegas with a couple  of my daughters, now plunged into a week of acting as a kind of tour co-ordinator to a group of 15 Americans who have come to Copan on a mission to help my organization build fuel-efficient  stoves. And just to add to the over-stimulation, it's election day in Honduras today. People have already started streaming into local schools and other polling stations to participate in what is essentially the primaries for the 2013 election. Rumour has it that things get interesting on days like today, when political opinions tend to heat up. Cuso Honduras actually told us volunteers to stay indoors today and stock up on emergency rations, advice that the locals got quite a kick out of when I told them. At any rate, my American friends are counting on me to lead them on a tour of t...

This is the first time I've lived anywhere other than Canada, let alone in a country with such a ferocious reputation for violence that my friends and family are regularly checking in with concerned voices as to whether everything’s fine down here.  Nothing to worry about, I tell them. And I mean that. Despite the endlessly bleak news about Honduras and a truly formidable murder rate, this country has in fact been a very pleasant place to live these past 10 months. The place needs work, absolutely, but this seemingly global need to portray the country as a random killing zone is both cruelly inaccurate and damaging to the people who live here.  A worried friend back home recently asked me about this comment from the latest newsletter of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders. In Honduras, “violence is the main strategy for solving any problem, whether it’s related to drugs or not,” said MSF spokesman Javier Rio Navarro. I don't know about you, but t...

Cuso International brought me to Honduras to do communications work for a Honduran non-profit organization, a job that is both strikingly similar and completely different to communications work in Victoria. On the one hand, communications is ultimately about finding effective ways to talk to the people you need to talk to, whether you’re in Honduras, Canada, East Timor or Uzbekistan.  But in Canada that largely means focusing your efforts on those with money or influence, whereas in Honduras the whole game changes because the country doesn’t have a responsive government or much of a culture of philanthropy. One thing that is identical, however, is proposal-writing. That might not be in the job description when you take a communications position, but trust me, you’ll end up doing it sooner or later if you’re working with non-profits. I’m well familiar with that soul-destroying process after seven years of working with Canadian non-profits, and now have enough proposals und...

It’s not often you’d describe a graveyard as a beehive of activity, but the cemetery here in Copan has been these past couple of days as the locals mark Dia de Los Difuntos . Every Latin American country celebrates the Day of the Dead – or Day of the Deceased, as it’s known here – in their own way.  In Honduras it’s a time for heading down to the cemetery to do a big cleanup of your loved one’s grave. There can’t be much budget in a poor country for maintenance staff at cemeteries, so it’s a chance for family members to spruce things up while honouring the memory of the mothers, fathers, grandparents and children buried there. The Copan cemetery is a five-minute walk from where I live, and I headed over early yesterday morning to check out the activities. Some 15 families were already hard at work. Many more would come over the course of the next two days. Some families just needed to freshen up the flowers a little or clear out a few weeds. But others were in the mids...