One month to departure - yikes!

Honduras capital Tegucigalpa, where we'll first land.

Just back from an intense five-day training course with Cuso International as we get ready for our departure for Honduras in a month.
I admit, I thought I was pretty culturally aware, but it turns out I still had a ton to learn. It's going to be quite a challenge to be working in a new culture, a different language, different issues, much warmer climate (OK, I'm really looking forward to that part), and in a society where I'm definitely going to have to curb my tendencies to just shoot my mouth off about this or that.
Fortunately, my not-yet-terrific Spanish language skills should help keep that in check, at least initially. And I'm viewing it as a learning opportunity to feel out communications in a country where speaking up about government, politics, etc has to be done much more cautiously.
Part of the Cuso training was a three-hour meeting with a "country resource person,"  which in our case was a young entrepreneur by the name of Ricardo Juarez, who moved to Canada from Honduras in September. I'll be ever grateful to him for the straight-up information he had for us on life in Honduras, which I now recognize will involve a lot more sightings of guns than I'm used to.
He also filled me in on "Honduran time," in which I will be expected to be punctual but everybody else will arrive maybe 30-45 minutes later than planned. Some of the more seasoned volunteers we met on training suggest I just carry a book everywhere to be able to read while I wait.
We're not down there on a holiday, but Ricardo did give us a great tip about an amazing place to visit during our travels, Cayos Cochinos. Such an opportunity to get to know a part of the world that I have yet to visit! I appreciate connecting with anyone who has travelled in Central America, particularly Honduras, so please send me a note at jodypatersonmobile@gmail.com if you've got tips to share.
If you've ever wondered about folding up the tent and doing some long-term volunteering, I can tell you that our experience with Cuso International so far has been great.
But one point they emphasize regularly is the need to stay flexible and adaptable. So if you're one of those people who likes all the i's dotted and the t's crossed well in advance, you'll need to let that go. We found out at the training session that our visas likely won't be completed until a few days before we leave, and I've been cautioned repeatedly that my job description is likely to change - and possibly change again - once I'm in Honduras. We won't know where we'll be living until a week or two, possibly longer, after our arrival.
Hope you'll stay tuned for what promises to be an amazing adventure. Click on the link just above this post to get to our fundraising page. And I'll be setting up a Shutterfly Web site once we're there so I can share photos with you as well. 

Too much power in PM's office

This Ottawa Citizen story on the Harper government's increasing control over the federal bureaucracy applies equally in B.C. Our ruling political parties don't even make a pretence at keeping the workings of government at arm's length anymore - it's all just one big spin machine as far as they're concerned.
It's a frightening development. The bureaucracy has traditionally kept a steady hand on the wheel of government while the various political parties went about their crazy antics. As pointed out by the author of this report criticizing the centralizing of power in the Prime Minister's Office, corruption is not just a risk but a proven result when political parties treat government like their private resource. 

A painful, late truth for young Victoria woman

Are there some parents so awful that they deserve to never see their child again?
Probably. But we've got a process for that in Canada, and it doesn't include kidnapping your own child against court orders.
I have great sympathy for everyone connected to the saga of the 20-year-old Victoria woman who has just learned that much of what she thought to be true about her life was a lie.
She does not even have the name she thought she had; she hasn't heard her real name since she was taken from Toronto by her mother after a 1993 custody fight.
The courts will sort out the truth of this crime. There's little served by people like me speculating about the mother, Patricia O'Byrne, who has been accused of taking her little girl, or trying to second-guess an Ontario court decision from 18 years ago.
But whatever the details turn out to be, it must be said that a grave injustice has been done to this young woman. What must it feel like, to find out at 20 that the foundations of your life have been built on sand?
She is now learning she has a father. A brother. A whole other extended family in Ontario - one that has been looking all over the world for her for the better part of two decades.
She's got a name she didn't know about, and no doubt some pointed questions for friends and family in Victoria who presumably helped keep her mother's deep, dark secret.
She's got 18 years of catching up with another side of her family who she likely has no memory of, including a brother who is close to her age.
And how unfortunate that she has to experience all these mind-blowing revelations amid the glare of national media interest.
But her father, Joe Chisholm, is over the moon to have finally found his daughter, and the saga makes for one heck of a story.
What makes a parent kidnap their child? Mothers and fathers are equally likely to be the offending parent, says the support organization Victims of Violence.
Often it starts with anger over a court decision around custody. Sometimes it's about fear, or a concern that the child isn't getting good care when with the other parent. Fortunately, most of the 230 or so parental kidnappings in Canada every year are resolved within a week.
Not so in this case. The girl was taken from Toronto after an Ontario court awarded joint custody to O'Byrne and Chisholm in 1993.
Ontario RCMP have had an open file on the kidnapping ever since, but it took a tip to the Missing Children Society of Canada this summer to bring the investigation to Victoria.
Chisholm has maintained a poignant blog on MySpace. There are years of unread Christmas greetings and happy birthdays to his daughter on the site.
"Happy birthday," reads one from Sept. 20, when his daughter turned 20. "Wherever you are and whatever you are doing I am thinking about you and I wish you and your family well. I await the day that we can meet again. Love, Dad."
Chisholm has found his happy ending, it appears. O'Byrne has landed in a nightmare. Being charged with kidnapping might not even be the worst of it, considering how it must feel to be caught out on such a massive lie.
The case is a good reminder that whatever we think is "in place" in our systems to protect us from such crimes is a fiction in itself. The daughter, whose name is now covered by a publication ban, went to school under a false name and nobody noticed. Her mother worked for government for years under an alias, with no one the wiser.
Neither kept a low profile. The mother was an active member of the school community, and well thought of. Yet a desperate dad just four provinces away never caught a whisper of any of it. If it weren't for the tip to Missing Children, this crime might never have been solved.
Who called in that tip? I like to think it was someone who loved this young woman, and couldn't bear to deny her the truth of her life any longer. I'm sure it took a lot of courage to make that call.
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple," opined the playwright Oscar Wilde.
We can only hope it heals this shattered family.

How come I don't know what a meme is?

Gee, I've always had a soft spot for Facebook as a way to connect, but now that I see the list of the top status updates in the past year, I'm not so sure if me and my kind are really much of a presence on the social-media site.
Happily, I'm not completely out as a Facebook trendsetter - I did have a status update involving the death of Amy Winehouse. Other than that, the top-10 list isn't really resonating with me.
As for the listing of the top 10 most-visited fictional character sites, I'm glad to see Bob Esponja made the grade. I might have even visited that site if I'd known it existed. I first saw the Sponge Bob cartoon many years ago while holidaying in Mexico, where he's known as Bob Esponja, and I've never been able to shake my habit of referring to him as Bob the Sponge. My grandkids mock me mercilessly for this. Maybe now they'll think I'm cutting-edge.

Cuso adventure in Honduras coming up

My partner and I are heading off to Honduras next month (you heard it here first!) to spend a year or possibly longer on a Cuso International volunteer placement.
It's all very exciting, but also a little terrifying what with the abundance of grim statistics and media headlines about Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. But I read this Huffington Post piece  this morning with gratitude and relief. It finally adds some humanity to the country and reminds me of the importance of not listening solely to the naysayers.
We leave for the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, in mid-January, and will make our way shortly after that to Copan Ruinas, a small northern town where I'll spend the next year doing communications work for a Honduran agency that partners with Cuso, the Comision de Accion Social Menonita.
I'll be posting regularly to my blog during our travels, and am really looking forward to this experience - not to mention solidifying my Spanish language skills. I can't wait to take everything I've learned through decades of communications work and put it to work helping great organizations like CASM and Cuso International.
Stay tuned for more details as the date of departure draws nearer, and if you find yourself in Victoria on the evening of Jan. 11, please plan to come to our goodbye party/fundraiser at the Fairfield Community Centre! We'll be raising money for my past and my future - PEERS Victoria and Cuso International.