A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Dear Canada: It’s been a year and a half since we parted, and I know I said some mean things in those emotional days toward the end. But I’ve been thinking about you a lot today. I saw a photo of you on Facebook, with that bright blue sky and sharp sunlight that I remember so well from the days when everything was going right. And suddenly I was lost in a thousand memories of the good times we had together.    Putting some distance between us has been good for me. There were times when I loved your temperate spirit and tidy habits, but I hated that 1000-yard stare you’d get in your eyes when the talk turned to politics. There’s so much about you that’s amazing and good, but sometimes I wonder if you even notice how time has changed you, hardened your heart.     But today, I’m missing you. I am remembering you on the last July 1 we had together, when I sat on the shores of Esquimalt Lagoon in the familiar chilled sunshine of early summer on the West Coast lo...

The Louisiana gang, from left: Ronny Sanders, Carl Glover, Gordon Holley, Jerry Houston, James Davis, Jeff Hardel and Casey Fair. The kids at Angelitos Felices children's home will be sleeping comfy tonight on the new beds and mattresses they've now got thanks to some amazing support from a group of Louisiana men.      Connections are made in strange ways in Honduras, and the connection that brought these men to Angelitos and to me is no exception. The way it came together reminds me that even though I'm a skeptic about stars aligning and God having a plan, some things really do seem to be fated.     The men belong to the Calvary Baptist Church in Ruston, Louisiana. One of them, Gordon Holley, has been doing projects in Honduras for many years as part of his university work. He came across my blog last year, saw a post I'd written about our work at Angelitos, and sent me an email asking if I'd take him and fellow congregation member James Davis to...

    At the risk of starting too many posts with "One thing I've learned from this Cuso volunteer experience...," I have something new to add to the growing list.     The latest learning is that this work tests your core values, in ways that get right past the pretty words and down to what you can actually live with. What's right? What's wrong? For possibly the first time in my life, I feel like I'm really being tested on the fundamentals of my deep-down self.    An easy example to start: Child labour. For all my life up until 18 months ago, I was opposed to child labour. I thought it was a good thing to buy more expensive coffee if it meant it had been picked by adults and not little children.      Deep down, I remain philosophically opposed to putting children to work. But now I see the issue from a whole other perspective, in which a family could very likely go hungry if their kids aren't allowed to pick coffee during the two-mont...

  One of the papers ran a big feature this week on tourism in Copan Ruinas and what strategies might kickstart the flagging industry. Somebody mentioned that one problem might be that the marketing approach had become too boring.    Maybe. But I have a feeling that the terrifying travel warnings about Honduras issued by virtually every developed country might be the bigger problem.    The U.S. State Department issued its scariest warning yet yesterday, raising the spectre of kidnappings, carjackings, "disappearances," rape, and even the possibility that the Honduran police will kill you. The advisory listed 10 of the country's 18 departments as particularly homicide-prone (sorry, Copan, you made the list), but added that no place in the country can be considered safe. If I hadn't been living here long enough to know better, I'd have concluded from the warning that only a reckless, death-wish kind of traveller would ever consider a trip here.    ...

June 12, 2013 Sure, it's pretty here, but not yet ready for tourists    Day 6 here in the Moskitia, and I’m bored dead. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, as good old Joni once sang, and what I miss the most right now is freedom.    One of my co-workers describes Palacios as a “beautiful prison.” That sums up the place nicely. The little town is a short boat ride away from Batalla, the Garifuna community where road access ends. But the two villages feel completely different.    There's a gorgeous lagoon just steps away from the main road through Palacios – which is to say, the dirt path that passes for a road because it's just large enough for the handful of locals who have motorcycles or quads – and all kinds of palm-tree wilderness and rivers to explore behind the town. Were this any other land, I’d be rustling up a kayak to explore the lagoon, or happily walking for hours to look for birds, butterflies, and maybe a monkey if I w...

   I’m sitting at this moment in a Moskitia hotel frequented almost exclusively by scary, armed men in the cocaine-distribution business, in a town that even the more adventurous guide books tell you to avoid. The bar downstairs is blasting narco-ballads, the deceptively cheery music that relates hair-raising stories of life in the illegal-drug trade.    The presence of scary, armed men is great fodder for blog posts for travelers who live elsewhere, but it’s fairly unsettling for the 67,000 people who live and work in Gracias a Dios, the watery, wondrous Honduras state that borders Nicaragua. And the cocaine traffickers are by no means the only difficulty here.   There’s no electricity anywhere in the Moskitia, so keeping the generator running (or accessing medical care, going to the bank, buying clothes or any other creature comfort) means a boat ride of anywhere from 25 minutes to five hours, depending how deep into the region’s many lagoons you ...

   Very amusing and pointed commentary here about how Honduras tends to get written about. I particularly like the suggested tags. I think I fall into some of this myself sometimes, although I'm really trying not to.    The national press here in Honduras doesn't deliver much better than the international media - at least two pages at the back of virtually every print edition of La Prensa is devoted to the previous day's body count, all of it presented with zero context and no follow-up. And man, can somebody teach those people how to ask (and answer) the question, "Why?" in their coverage?