No easy education for Honduran children

No school for these Copan Ruinas kids

Wouldn’t you know it, a cold followed me down to Honduras. Or was it that sniffly little five-year-old who spends most of his days here at our homestay with his abuela - his grandma? So it goes. It’s always the kids that get you.

Speaking of which, I now see an area where we might be able to do something significant in Honduras. The public education system here is ludicrous; my teacher at the Spanish school, whose husband teaches in the public system, tells me he has 90 students in his class (whoa, how would the BC Teachers Federation react to THAT??), ranging in age from 5 to 11. No wonder the country has got serious problems.

There are private schools here, but it costs $100 to $150 a month to send your child to one. If you’re a minimum-wage-earner ($200 a month), obviously that’s not even in the zone. But what if I could help connect a few decently heeled British Columbians to families in Honduras with school-age children? For less than what it costs to pay for cable and Internet for a month in our land, they could support a Honduran child to get a decent education.

I’ll be working with Cuso International and the Comision deAccion Social Menonita here in Copan Ruinas. Educating youngsters isn’t part of the plan for my placement - my work with that organization will be around communications, as they’re a 30-year-old agency with a ton of good work under their belt but little written history to show for it.

But as long as I’m here, I sense an opportunity to get involved in  other interesting projects. And what could be better than trying to help educate the next generation of Hondurans? Educated people earn more, demand more from their governments, and are better able to prepare their own children for more of the same. If my partner and I can play any role in that, I’d count this year or two in Honduras as a major success.

My partner and I had already been talking about what we might do on that front when we met a young Honduran at the fiesta the other night who has the same idea. He’s an archaeologist with six years of study in the U.S. under his belt, and a native of Copan Ruinas who really wants to help the children of his home town get a better education. With his knowledge of the families in this small town and our connection to people in B.C. who might love the chance to contribute to good works in a very direct way, what’s to lose?

At the homestay where we’re camped out in a spare bedroom for the next month, the nine-year-old grandson of the owner is already speaking pretty good English as a result of being sponsored to attend the Mayatan private school, which we passed yesterday morning on our visit to one of the fincas - coffee plantations - that dot the mountainsides around here. His family could never have afforded that school if it weren’t for a wealthier family that stepped up to help young Carlos, whose father was killed in San Pedro Sula two years ago.

But that school is populated by Canadian and American teachers. The archaeologist we spoke with sees an opportunity to create similar sponsorship programs at some of the other private schools, creating more stable employment for Honduran teachers as well as better education for the students.

We’re going to talk with him more about that in the weeks to come, so stay tuned. Maybe you, too, will see a role for yourself in this project.

At the Fiesta

Esmeralda, our host

I had a moment last night. A young woman who is part of this big Honduran family we now find ourselves enfolded in was having her birthday, and I was asked to play my accordion as part of the celebration.

Truth be known, people don’t ask me to play my accordion too often. But the 20 or so family members stuffed into the little place next door turned out to be absolutely delighted to hear me play, especially the six or seven children who gathered close to stare at the accordion like a creature from space.

Having read nothing but scary stories about crime and violence in Honduras in the weeks before our departure, I’d picked up several music books of Latin-American popular music for the accordion, telling myself that surely even a tough-guy narco-traficante wouldn’t want to kill a nice Canadian girl playing Sin Ti or some other tune that his old mama knew.

So there I was last night, surrounded by happy Latin Americans and my music stand groaning under a load of Latin American tunes that they actually knew. I played for at least an hour, before and after the cake festivities, before and after the beautiful birthday girl got her face gently stuffed into the middle of the cake as she blew out the candles and an endless stream of cousins, amigos, grandchildren, aunts and uncles arrived to join in the festivities. Man, it was magic.

Through all those terrifying Honduran headlines leading up to our departure, I tried to hang onto what I feel certain to be true: That people are just people, all over the world. Cultures vary, but we have so much in common. We love our children, seek meaning and purpose, treasure our families, share meals, invent wacky but endearing customs that bond us to each other. Honduras seemed like a dark, murderous place based on the news stories that made it up to Canada, but I clung to the belief that what we’d mostly find when we got here was people going about their lives.

And now that we have arrived, I’m so happy to see that it’s true. You can’t soft-pedal the problems of a country that has one of the highest homicide rates in the world outside of war-torn countries, but Honduras also has strong, vibrant families who want better for their children. I hope I can play a part in that, doing more than just playing the accordion (not that music doesn’t have its own power to transform, of course).

Just before the party last night, I read a chapter of El Leon, La Bruja y El Ropero to five-year-old Carlos Alberto. He was transfixed, and never mind my halting Spanish. Later today we’re going to the Copan library to get him some books. One boy, one book, one small act that could someday link to other people’s small acts, in ways that change everything.

And until then, there’s always the accordion.

Jan 24 - First day at Spanish school

For my pal Mr. Pacific Gazetteer! Not quite a video, but soon.

OK, it’s real now. That theoretical day when we would live in Honduras has arrived - we’re here in Copan Ruinas, settling into the home stay that we’ll be living in for the next month while we immerse ourselves in Spanish at the Ixbalanque Language School.

It’s all one gigantic new experience, from this tiny town of cobblestone streets to this rooming at a sprawling Honduran family’s home. The matriarch is Esmeralda, a friendly and outgoing woman who has put us up in a bedroom in the big house where she lives with her husband (when he’s not out of town working) and what seems like a couple dozen grandchildren, nieces and various other family members who live in the houses adjacent to this one.

Language school promises to be intense: Four hours a day of one-to-one immersion, and then home to a household that speaks only Spanish. It really sunk in for the first time today, as we sat drinking two-for-one pina coladas at Twisted Tanya’s, the bar on our route home: We live here now. How the heck did that happen??

The town itself is the smallest I’ve ever lived in, some 7,000 residents in all. There are world-class Mayan ruins about a kilometre down the road, and steep hillsides all round. On our way into town yesterday, we passed house after house with blankets of coffee beans drying in the sun in the front yard, but tourism is also a big economic driver, and treasured in a country that has very little.

I expect this year or two in Honduras to be very surprising. Without exception, the people we have met so far have been warm and welcoming. But we saw a dead body at the side of the road yesterday just outside of Santa Rosa de Copan, presumably a victim of some narco-traficante mayhem. I’ve lived a lifetime in Canada with barely a thought for murder, but in this country it’s an all too real risk for the young men and women looking for a quick way out of poverty.

I couldn’t understand everything said by the man who drove us from Santa Rosa to Copan Ruinas yesterday - he speaks only Spanish, and at this stage I’m perhaps grasping maybe two-thirds of what people say. But I did understand his point about the irony of the drug trade: That Honduras has few users - they’re too poor to buy the cocaine coming up from South America to markets in the U.S. and Canada - but nonetheless bears the brunt of the hazards resulting from the distribution end of the business.

Que lastima, as the Hondurans would say. And indeed, it is a shame, and a great sorrow for the Honduran people. 

But I smell something delicious frying in Esmeralda’s cocina, and it’s bringing me back to the now - the place where Hondurans live almost exclusively. Tomorrow is another day. 

Jan 23 - The big adventure begins

We’re on the move again, headed toward the town where we’ll be living during our time in Honduras, Copan Ruinas. Alas, it looks like Internet access could be more challenging from this point on - we’re at a hotel in Santa Rosa de Copan that in theory has wifi, but it’s not working out that way so far.

Beautiful drive yesterday, up into mountains that looked like they were lifted straight out of one of those Juan Valdez coffee ads from way back when. I’m well-familiar with that term about “shade-grown coffee” from all the politically correct bags of fair-trade coffee beans I’ve bought over the years, but the reality was still surprising. The small coffee plants are dark, dark green and buried deep in the shade of the forests. There are probably giant plantations somewhere with row upon row of plants growing, but the ones along our route grew in small patches that looked like backyard gardens.

The towns are small and scattered now that we’re outside of the city. But the difficulties of the 21^st century in Honduras still find them. We passed through a charming little town, La Entrada, that I’m told is full of crime due to its key placement on one of the routes that the narco-traficantes use for smuggling cocaine and other drugs north from South America.

I’d heard that the food was bland in Honduras, but obviously those people don’t like the same kind of food that I do. I’ve enjoyed everything so far - the feta-like cheese, the dark frijoles, the crispy plantain that seems to be more of a staple here than tortillas. And the meat! I’ve never understood why meat in poorer countries is always so much tastier than the meat we get in Canada, but it is. I had a little barbecued chicken last night that was amazing.

Today we make our way to Copan Ruinas, a couple hours’ drive from here. My partner and I will be in a language school there for the next month, getting our Spanish skills down and using that time in a home stay to look for a more permanent place to live in the little town. Cuso International covers the cost of housing for its volunteers, up to $400 Cdn a month.

That’s a generous allowance in a country where minimum-wage earners make just half of that in a month, and where most people live on less than $1.50 a day. So while we’re looking forward to living more simply in our new land, we’re well aware that we remain in a position of significant privilege.

Worn out from all the learning

A corner store in Tegucigalpa, where robberies are just how it is

They say that babies need to sleep a lot because their poor little brains are overwhelmed by their new world. I know the feeling.
We've just finished four days of orientation with the Cuso International team in Honduras, and have found ourselves staggering back to our little hotel each day worn out from paying attention to all the new things we need to know. New culture, new reality, new language, new way of operating - much, much slower than we're used to, but that can be surprisingly exhausting in these early days.
I catch myself trying to will people to hurry up. I'm not particularly punctual, but I'm positively on time by the standards of our new land. Can't imagine how I will get used to Canadian culture again once I finally succumb to the laid-back pace of Latin America.
Emergency preparedness takes on much more immediacy in a country that really does have emergencies. Cuso program director Cecilia Sanchez noted that during the military coup in Honduras in 2009, people were ordered to remain in their houses for two days, and water and power were cut in some areas. When the devastating Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras in 1998, more than 10,000 people died and almost 80 per cent of Honduras' infrastructure was wiped out, setting the country back 50 years in the opinion of the leaders of the day.
So while I never quite got around to taking emergency preparedness seriously in Victoria, where the threat of the Big Earthquake always seemed theoretical, I feel quite sure I'll be stashing canned goods and water for just such emergencies once we settle into our new home in Copan Ruinas in another month or so.