A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

  I've been searching for a way to describe the swervy, teeth-rattling experience of travelling on a typical rural road in Honduras, but it's one of those things that you really have to feel for yourself.     But yesterday on the drive back from Las Flores, where my co-workers did a workshop on making organic fertilizer, it dawned on me that if I just stuck the video camera out the window, I might be able to convey at least some of the experience. The jouncing, the sharp turns, the speed bumps as we pass through little towns - a hand-held video shot catches all of that.      So click  here for a five-minute video snapshot of that 45-minute ride back toward Copan Ruinas, starting with the crazy drive right through the flood plain of the Rio Negro - which, of course, is impassable anytime the rains are heavy.     As I watched the video, I also saw that it serves the purpose of getting past the pretty pictures I've been posting and showi...

   I'm in that giddy state that comes after something you've been dreading is over, and it turned out not nearly as bad as you'd thought. In this case the anxiety-inducing event was a devotional I did this morning for my co-workers on gay tolerance - a subject that is rarely talked about here, and most definitely not in the context of the weekly prayer meeting at our office.    But for a while now I've been thinking that my co-workers are splendid, loving people, and that perhaps they really just needed a gentle push to reconsider some of the kneejerk prejudices against homosexuality that exist in Honduras. I knew I couldn't go at them with a forceful presentation on how wrong it is to deny people the basic right of loving who they choose, but I figured I might be able to just plant a seed or two that might start them thinking differently.    As it turned out, several of them had already been thinking differently. And while I noticed some people shif...

  The ever-changing field near the river.  I have a 15-minute walk to work every morning. Today's was particularly interesting, what with me stepping out the door and immediately getting into a discussion with a neighbour about the swollen vulva of the wandering young dog sleeping on our patio, which he told me meant she was in heat and thus in need of one of the mystery injections they give dogs down here to stop pregnancy. But every day's walk is interesting in its own way.     I make a point to say good morning to everyone I pass, having come to see that gringos are in general not nearly friendly enough for this extroverted and amiable culture. Shop owners getting ready for the day, women out sweeping the street outside their houses, cantina workers, street drunks - all of us exchange greetings, and at times get into spirited conversations about one thing or another.     I walk the dirt road below our house, a favourite haunt of the handful of l...

       My heart is breaking for neighbours of ours here in Copan Ruinas, whose teenage son was kidnapped 21 days ago while Paul and I were holidaying in Canada and the U.S. The family has yet to receive any ransom demand, one of those things that likely signal the worst for the poor boy.    Coincidentally, he drove me to work one morning a few days before we left on vacation. He was a brand-new mototaxi driver and I was his first paying customer. He seemed like a friendly and social guy ready to begin a new life as an adult.     Now I fear he's just another of the thousands of young Honduran men who are gone from this world for reasons that are never talked about, at the hands of criminals who are rarely prosecuted. All his family knows is that people saw him get into a non-descript grey car without licence plates on the dirt road that I walk to work on every morning, and he hasn't been seen since. It is not an unusual scenario here. ...