A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

National Theatre, Tegucigalpa Our Cuso International training continues, launched on this particular day with a heavy morning session with Honduran journalist Iris Mencia. You have to be brave to be a boat-rocking journalist in Honduras, and she fit the bill. She gave us a frank and eye-opening introduction to the rough and tumble history of her country, especially since the 2009 coup that ousted former president Manuel Zelaya.  But Iris also turned out to be lots of fun and a local celebrity to boot, bundling us into a taxi in the afternoon for a walking tour of downtown Tegucigalpa in which she seemed to know virtually everyone we passed. She even convinced the security guard at the 1912 National Theatre to let us wander around the place even though it was closed. And she plays the melodica. How can you not take a shine to anyone who plays the melodica? My partner and I have travelled a  lot in Mexico and had wondered whether Honduras would feel similar. But Tegucig...

We started our in-country training today at the Cuso International office here in Tegucigalpa. Other volunteers had warned me that what we would learn in the "security issues" portion of the day would be scary, and it was. Then again, I've been reading Honduran newspapers on-line for months now to get ready for coming here, and it had dawned on me quite some time ago that things would be a little different in my new land compared to good ol' Victoria. As it turns out, the people who bear the brunt of the violence in Honduras are generally either participants of the drug trade or regular Hondurans trying to go about their daily lives. Attacks on foreigners like us are rare. Sadly, the reason for that is because it's known that foreigners might actually have connections somewhere who could help them or cause trouble for the perpetrators, while the Hondurans really don't have anybody. In practice, what this means is that in the big cities at least, people wh...

Victoria to San Francisco, San Francisco to Houston, Houston to Tegucigalpa. It took a couple days to get here, but we have arrived in the capital of Honduras, to begin what will ultimately be at least a year and more likely two of living and working here. We arrived a mere four hours ago, but already I feel huge relief just to see the place. Few things are worse than reading all the crazy news stories from afar about events in Honduras - it started to feel like we were on a suicide mission. Instead, we arrived at a perfectly nice airport in what appears to be a perfectly nice city, albeit one that even the locals warn us not to go wandering around at night. But we did brave a short walk to the Mas Por Menos supermercado  near our little Hotel Alsacia, a charming blink-and-you-miss-it guest house that Cuso International has put us up at while we take the "in-country" training to get ready for the work I'll be doing with the Comision de Social Accion de Menonita in ...

Loads of fun at last night's farewell party, but the cold light of day brings a disastrous looking house and just three brief days to get things under control. We have grown ruthless in our sorting. I took sleeping bags and blankets to Our Place today, and dropped off old bits and pieces of audio equipment and a dead Mac to the computer recycling place. I've lost track of how many bags of stuff I've hauled out of here, yet more just keep piling up. The ridiculous amount of coat hangers we bagged up this afternoon highlight just how ridiculous an amount of clothes hung in our closets. A young fellow at the bottle depot when I dropped off the electronics rushed over to my little pile like I'd brought gold, and took virtually everything. These seem like hungry times - put anything at the curb, like my partner's mildering and badly neglected golf clubs in their spider-filled bag that's been outside in the shed for the last six years, and they're gone in an ...

Should you ever decide to pack it all in and move to a distant land, let me tell you, the final week of preparation is hell. My partner and I are both tense and strained-looking. We're still talking, but in short, monosyllabic sentences that seem as stripped down as our house, which is somehow devoid of stuff yet more cluttered than it has ever been. All routines have been turned on their end,  and every day is full of a long list of tasks that never seems finished. ("Pots to Rachelle's house"; "Costco run"; "Notify bank so Mom can deposit my paycheque"; "Photos to SD card"; "Clean oven"; "Pick up malaria drugs" - you get the picture.) Of course, my deadline personality hasn't helped. Why, for instance, did we wait until a few weeks before leaving for Honduras to decide to get our wills done? Why did I wait until Jan. 4 to make a video with a friend recovering from cancer, when we could have done it two or three...