A load of manure and we're off to San Geronimo

As I've griped probably one too many times (in Spanish, the verb is quejarse), learning about your workplace when nobody speaks the same language as you is really difficult. That's why I like field trips so much - hopping into a vehicle with one of my co-workers with nary a clue as to where we're going or what we'll do when we get there. I just say yes to every opportunity and figure it will all add up to knowledge.
Yesterday, the task was to deliver 25 giant sacks of chicken manure to campesinos in a little pueblo called San Geronimo. There are several dozen little pueblos in the hills around Copan Ruinas, often along roads that you or I would likely consider  rough hiking trails through the bush were we to encounter one in Canada. The road to San Geronimo was definitely in that category, requiring us to drive through a river, negotiate narrow little climbs that almost stalled out a 4x4, and steer around obstacles that included tire-eating ruts, scary dropoffs and herds of cattle.

But first we got to go to the egg farm to get the manure. I'd been curious about the place since I first passed by it a few weeks ago while out for a walk, because the little bit I could see from the road gave the impression that it was a much kinder, gentler type of egg farm than you use in developed countries. but it doesn't welcome visitors. And it was - still a prison of sorts for the chickens, but at least one with fresh air, natural light, lots of room to move and dirt to scratch.
The manure costs 25 lempiras a sack, about $1.25. We loaded 25 bags into the truck - OK, I just stood around like a girl and let the two guys do it, I admit - and off we went to deliver the stuff. My organization works with the poorest of the poor around Copan, almost none of whom have trucks for picking up their own sacks of manure.
One of the big tasks for my organization, the Comision de Accion Social Menonita, is to help local farmers get better yields. Growing beans, corn and coffee on tiny little plots of land is a tough way to make a living, but the use of natural fertilizers and different planting processes helps. So CASM first leads a workshop to demonstrate and encourage better strategies, and then follows up with the farmers who want to give something a try. The farmers can't afford to pay for fertilizers, but they either barter goods in exchange for the manure or volunteer their time and labour for a future project.
The farms of Honduras look nothing like the farms back home. In some cases, the campesinos don't even own the land where they live and work. The production area is typically very small, often on an extreme slope, and either irrigated using rough-hewn systems that channel river water or completely reliant on the rainy season from May to September.
But the people in San Geronimo have a slightly better setup - still crazy slopes and really basic living arrangements, but at least they've got title to their land. And they've got Honduran sunshine, which at this time of year produces a bounty of coffee, tomatoes and watermelon. The next round of crops will be beans and corn, which need the rains to flourish.
Someone from wealthy country like Canada wants to be careful throwing around terms like "poor but happy," but there is a certain ever-present cheerfulness among the people I've met in these little communities. The children work as hard as the adults, and every day must be a slog. But for them it's just the way it is.
I don't doubt they'd give it up in a heartbeat for a hot shower and running water, steady electricity, a flat-screen TV and a vehicle to drive up and down those steep roads they spend so much time walking along. But they don't have much time for pining about what they haven't got.
Truck emptied, we bounced back to town. It was a good day.

Surely God wouldn't want it this way

I don't think I can call this a crisis of faith that I'm having today, because I've never really been one for faith. Maybe there are religious journalists out there somewhere, but for me years of learning about the bad things that happen to good people (and vice versa) shook the faith right out of me.
Still, I have a great appreciation for the good work done by people of faith, and up until today have not felt the urge to cry out, "Oh, come ON!" at the Monday-morning devotionals at my new workplace. In a country this religious, I feel  like I'm participating in the culture by attending the devotionals, and I usually find them quite sweet sessions that bond my co-workers in a much more meaningful way than a garden-variety staff meeting ever could.
But today, something got to me. The topic was harmless enough - a reflection on God as artist - but I found myself squirming at the heartfelt statements of my co-workers as they talked about their faith. Perhaps it's because my cousin died yesterday, too young and too soon. More likely it's because I'm living in a country that has such deep faith in the face of intense problems that are very much man-made.
Moments before the devotional started, I was talking to my boss about a doctor in Santa Rita - a few kilometres down the road from Copan - who was kidnapped last week and hasn't been seen since. Rumour has it that one of his young kidnappers was killed shortly after, as can happen when stupid young boys keep the company of some of the very dangerous men who do dark business in Honduras.
Nobody at my workplace was particularly surprised by either crime. Murder and mayhem is something that touches virtually every Honduran family sooner or later. There's an astounding 19 murders a day here, in a country with a quarter of the population of Canada. And that's not even counting all the robberies, assaults, kidnappings and freaky accidents that routinely happen to Hondurans - from the old guy killed when a load of plastic pipe fell off a truck and knocked him to the ground, to the toddler that drowned in the pila where her mother does the laundry
And yet they have faith. They go to church three or four times a week. They thank God at every opportunity for whatever small thing is going right in their lives. They shrug off the sheer madness of this place as being "God's will," and carry on.
But if this is God's will, how do you explain a place like Canada? I come from a country where churches are closing for lack of a congregation and the number of secular citizens easily outnumbers the religious ones, and yet things are going pretty good there. What kind of God would give a good life to those who don't believe in Him, while endlessly punishing those whose devotion is absolute?
Violent crimes have been decreasing for years in Canada. Murder is a rarity. No Canadian hotel clerk ever has to fear that she will go to a guest's room to shush a noisy party and find so many armed men in the room that all she can do is back out quickly and forget the whole thing, which happened this very weekend here in Copan. (And let me assure you, calling the police is not really an option here.)
I get that faith brings comfort to people living in difficult times. Hondurans need God because life here on Earth is cruel and harsh for so many of them, and if you couldn't believe that things were going to improve in the afterlife you'd probably go crazy.
But maybe a little more crazy is in order right about now. All of this violence isn't God's will, it's just what happens when the rule of law  is completely negated, the tentacles of the massive cocaine industry seep into all facets of life, and a government is too weak and compromised to act. Violence has been normalized in Honduras, and it seems to me that accepting that as God's will is virtually a guarantee that nothing will improve for people here. 
Matthew 18:21-22: Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."
Even Jesus had a line in the sand. For the sake of this country, I pray for a little fury amid all that faith.

When drive-by sales are all you've got

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.

So goes the adage. Spend any time with producers in Honduras, however, and you soon see that if the lesson doesn’t also include helping the guy get his fish to market, he’s still got a big problem.  

Honduras is an agricultural economy. Like farmers everywhere, the average Honduran trying to scratch a living from the earth is beset by all the usual trials and tribulations of farm life:  Not enough rain; too much of it; a hot year; a cold year; insects; tired soil.

 But listening to the 20 or so producers at the two-day workshop we went to this week in Siguatepeque, it became pretty clear that Hondurans also face tremendous problems getting their goods to market. Not only are they unable to afford the costs of moving their goods, there often isn’t a distribution network anyway, let alone a co-ordinated plan for finding markets.

In my past days as a traveller on a two-week vacation, I would have looked out the bus window at all the roadside stands of bananas we saw on the long drive to Siguatepeque and found them charming. I probably would have found it quaint that women and children stand by the highway here waving bags of onions, tortillas, oranges or whatever they’ve got at passing vehicles.

But in fact, that’s the only option most small producers have to market their products. Farm-gate sales for many Honduran growers come down to long, hot days at the side of the highway hoping that some of the vehicles whizzing by at 100 kilometres an hour need a fruit-and-veggie break.

The fish analogy came to mind when we passed the beautiful Lake Yojoa, about an hour outside of San Pedro Sula. All along the highway, local fishermen had their day’s catch hanging on racks at the roadside. They obviously knew how to fish, but what they could have used was some help selling what they caught.

At the workshop – organized by fellow Cuso International volunteers working in Honduras – the plight of the honey producers was particularly enlightening.

Trying to make a living from honey is a challenging undertaking at the best of times. As one of the producers noted ruefully, honey lasts a long time and nobody needs much of it. But the producers in Honduras face the added problem of being unable to afford containers for their honey or transportation to get it to market.

One of the first sights I saw when we came to Copan a couple months ago was a man going door-to-door with wine bottles full of honey.  I took to be an endearing local custom. Nope, just a desperate measure.

Fortunately, the workshop was also heartening affirmation that Hondurans are like that Tubthumper song I like so much: They get knocked down, but they get up again. Far from being discouraged at their lot in life, the producers spent long hours talking about how to improve their sectors.  

The cocoa producers set a date for launching a processing centre where they could all bring dry their beans to dry. The rambutan growers set targets for increasing their yield and expanding into wines and jams. The coffee growers discussed ways to connect directly to markets in the United States and Canada. The honey producers vowed to source out more containers, and more uses for honey.

Teach a man to raise bees and he’ll have honey for a lifetime. But give him a market and he’ll be a whole lot happier. 

This place needs help - but how?

This family relies on pre-schoolers to flog corn-husk dolls to tourists

How do you help a country that has so many problems?
Big, big question. I suspect I'll spend much of my two years here trying to figure that one out. My particular project with the Comision de Accion Social Menonita will probably click along quite nicely, but you can't live in a place with so much poverty and trouble without wishing you could do a whole lot more than that. (Today's headline: Half of the 90 murders a month in San Pedro Sula are committed by kids under 18.)
When I first arrived, I was very enthusiastic about figuring out ways to connect people I know in Canada with Honduran kids who could be sponsored to attend private schools. The public school system is atrocious - giant classes, no supplies, and militant teachers who walk off the job so much (for good reason - some of them haven't been paid in months) that students typically get just 50 days of school in a year. For maybe $100 or $150 a month, it's possible to buy a Honduran youngster a seat in a much better school.
But I'm daunted by the prospect of trying to pick which youngsters would get such a favour, when there's actually millions of them who need the help.
Then there's the added complication of a school system that for most children ends at Grade 6 no matter what, not to mention the pressures that impoverished families put on their kids to quit school and get a job. And as somebody at Cuso International pointed out when I asked about taking on personal projects, what happens to the families when a volunteer inevitably returns home?
In the short term, I'm thinking that the better thing to do might be to focus on a one-off project that helps as many people as possible. For instance, while we were out in the mountain-top pueblo of La Cumbre this weekend helping a group of Texans from First Christian Church dig a new water reservoir for the villagers, I learned that residents actually have a water-treatment plant - a rare thing - but lack the resources to buy the big plastic bottles so that every household can access the treated water.
So for the lack of $5 per household, they don't have clean water. The pueblo is about 70 bottles short - $350 all in. I mean, that's what we'd call a "no-brainer" in Canada. I can make that happen.
My boss tells me there are all kinds of little water projects in the various pueblos that could be done for a few hundred dollars. Access to water is the bane of these villagers' existence - not only do they live largely without vehicles many kilometres away from commercial centres that sell bottled water, they can't afford to buy it anyway.
So maybe I can play a role in matching up a few bucks from my friends and family in Canada with small water projects that will benefit countless Honduran families for years to come. I'd consider that a good use of my time here.
Ultimately, what Honduras could really use is vast international support and pressure on its government from all the "developed" countries and private interests that do business here.
Canada and the U.S. are major trading partners with Honduras. Mining companies from my homeland have shown much enthusiasm for Honduran minerals. If you're taking from a country, don't you have a responsibility to give back?
On paper, Honduras looks like a democratic republic with all kinds of processes, programs and laws in place for the benefit of its citizens. It's a signatory on all the right international agreements guaranteeing equality and happy days for all.
But that's on paper. The reality isn't even close. Why even have all these global conventions and declarations around human rights, universal education, the rights of children and all the other grand-sounding pipe dreams when the international community clearly takes zero responsibility for holding signatories accountable?
I used to find it appalling that the United States was one of the few democracies in the world that refused to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but now I'm  starting to appreciate the honesty. The kids aren't all right in Honduras, Canada, or probably most of the countries that have inked that agreement.
But for now, I guess we'll take things one water bottle at a time.

Same life - but different

When I was first contemplating what life would be like as a Cuso International volunteer in Honduras, I really wanted to read a blog post from someone in the country who could explain the day-to-day stuff of the place - not so much the big cultural issues, because Cuso does a pretty good job of preparing you for that, but things like buying groceries, disposing of garbage, staying healthy. What would it feel like to live in this new place?
Unfortunately, that information has to be really specific, because it's different for every country, every region, every town. I did talk to a couple volunteers in Honduras who were very helpful in getting a broad sense of the place, but one lived in a big city and the other lives in a town three hours away in the mountains, which might as well be a foreign land when you're talking about the need for highly specific local intel.
So for all the future volunteers who might one day be contemplating a placement in Copan Ruinas, Honduras, here's the kind of post I was looking for last fall - a little practical information on daily life in a new land.
Clean water: That's a big one. We buy purified water sold in those big blue office-water-cooler size bottles, for a buck a bottle. We pick ours up at the store next door, but there's a constant stream of guys in pickup trucks driving around the neighbourhood selling the same bottles if there's no store nearby.
Fruits and veggies: Forget those well-stocked supermarkets you're accustomed to in Canada. You can find them in the big cities in Honduras, but here in Copan you'll probably want to buy in the public market. Don't expect the same variety - the market generally sells only the produce that grows nearby -  but you can count on it being much fresher and tastier than back home.
Garbage collection: Three times a week! How's that for service? If you're an enthusiastic recycler, it's going to be painful to adjust to throwing everything in the garbage again, because there's no "blue boxes" down here. But take comfort from knowing that some recycling does go on in Honduras, it's just done by people who work at the dump. And they need the job.
Paying bills: Well, here's the really good news - you won't have many. Household water tends to be included in the rent in Copan, so all you're looking at is electricity and maybe an $8-a-month cable bill if you want TV. The hydro-meter man comes by once a month and sticks a bill on your door, and you pay it at the bank. So far, it's looking like our electrical bill will be about $10 a month, which covers the costs of our lighting and a fridge. Our stove is gas, our clothes dryer is the great outdoors, and the temperatures are so pleasant here that you don't need heat or air-conditioning.
Laundry: You can get a washing machine if you really want one, but why not hire somebody who needs the work and get your clothes done by hand? We've hired a very nice single mom who does a couple hours of cleaning and laundry once a week for $6, a decent wage in a country where a lot of people are trying to get by on a buck a day.
Eating out: Copan sees about 120,000 visitors a year, so there are probably a dozen quite nice restaurants in town where you can get a  meal for under $10. But volunteers live on fairly tight budgets, so these kinds of places will probably be occasional treats. There are some comidas serving cheap lunches in the public market, and lots of smaller Honduran eateries where you can get traditional fare like pupusas, baleadas and tacos for $3 or less. And you can buy a great piece of fried chicken at Super Pollo Express for a buck.
Staying healthy: Drink purified water, of course. We're also following the advice of a Honduran doctor who Cuso introduced us to and are soaking most of our fruits and veggies (unless you can peel them) for 15 minutes in a litre of water with 10 drops of bleach, then in purified water. And even the locals have advised us to stay away from the cabbage - all those tight layers, trapping who knows what. So we do.
There's a general lack of snack foods here, so I'm probably eating healthier than I ever have. That and a lot of walking have trimmed me down since I arrived, and the quiet life of a small town is also conducive to getting more rest. It's all good.
Bugs: Get used to them. I actually entertained the notion before I got here that I could avoid being bitten by mosquitoes, but that was a pipe dream. Watkins insect repellent that I brought from home is now my daily skin cream, and we're taking chloroquine every week just in case any of those mosquitoes are packing malaria. As for the cockroaches, they don't bite and they keep a low profile. Wear good shoes if you go out hiking - I stepped in an ants' nest in my first few days here while hiking through a coffee field in thongs (!) and the stinging sensation was damn unpleasant.
Entertainment: Not much going on here. La ViaVia, a local bar/hotel run by an intense Belgian guy, shows movies for a buck every Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night, and has a nightly happy hour from 5-7 p.m. If you like the nightclub scene, there's a disco that I'm told is fun for the young folks. There are two or three other bars where you'll mostly find tourists, including a German place that makes its own beer, and a few seedy cantinas where a handful of hard-drinking Honduran men hole up.
Recreation: Lots of dirt roads to wander along, but be prepared for hills in every direction. Horse-riding is cheap - hook up with the locals and $35 will get you and a friend three or four hours of trail riding. There's also a pool where you can pay $3.50 and spend the day lounging around like you're at a resort - very nice on a hot Saturday.
Transportation: We've gone carless, and it's great. There's a good bus service should you find yourself going stir-crazy in a small town, and a lot of tourist "shuttles" to various destinations. But the roads are universally in terrible condition with a million curves, so best to bring Gravol and a strong constitution if you're planning to spend a lot of time on the road. There's also an informal "car-share" system in Copan and you can often catch a ride with a local if you need to go to the city.
Banking: Good luck with this one. I had Cuso's help to set up an account at the bank they use, and it still took me almost two months to get a bank card - quite a problem when the bank doesn't have a branch anywhere near Copan. In theory, you should be able to open an account here with two letters of recommendation, but be prepared to be extremely patient through what will likely be a baffling and frustrating process, and to have an alternative source of funds to get you through. We were grateful for our Canadian accounts in the period when we had no money, but keep in mind that your bank back home charges $5 every time you do a withdrawal.
I think the most important advice for anybody contemplating international volunteer work is to find another volunteer still living in the same place they're headed -  ideally working with the same organization that's sending them, as that's a whole other set of surprises -  and then ask a thousand questions. Things are still going to catch you by surprise even then, but maybe there will be a few less bumps in the road.