Resistance is futile

A friend asked me recently if I ever felt “Third-Worlded out” living in Honduras.

Daily life in fact feels pretty First World here in Copan, what with cable TV in our comfy living room, hot showers every night and a good pizza place just down the road.

But the patterns of your life change even when you move across town, let alone to the second-poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.  The comment got me thinking about what I do differently now that I live someplace where even a $10,000 annual volunteer stipend puts you in the ranks of the well-off.

I do the laundry by hand. This is an amusing development, considering that in my former life I didn’t even hand-wash the things that you were supposed to hand-wash, let alone things like towels and sheets. But we don’t have a washer or a dryer anymore and there’s no laundromat in Copan. I could probably take it to somebody, but mostly it just seems easier to do it myself.

I don’t have a car. Gas is the same price here as it is in Canada. That’s pretty good motivation for going carless. Add in the horrendous condition of the roads and the crazy way Hondurans drive, and walking looks better and better.  We live about three blocks from the commercial centre and my workplace is a pleasant 15-minute stroll away, so it hasn’t been as big as an adjustment as I thought it would be. It does rule out fun little day trips into the surrounding countryside, however, unless you can find someone with a horse to rent.

I leave my iPod at home. I used to love long strolls with nothing but my Nano for company. But you just look too much like a rich gringo with your earbuds in and that distracted, I’m-in-my-own-head look that you get when you’re grooving to your own personal soundtrack. It’s not just about the risk of getting your  stuff stolen – it’s about the way it sets you apart from everyone else in the community, seeing as I’ve yet to see anyone here strolling around with a personal stereo.

I dress very plainly. Those who know me might say, “Yeah? So what’s new about that?” But I’m talking really plain – I’ve got maybe 3 skirts, all in drab colours, and three pair of hopelessly practical shoes to be able to manoeuvre around the obstacle course of crazily canted cobblestones, gaping holes, dog poo, ragged concrete and mud that you deal with any time you walk out the door here. I’m not sure if my plain dressing is a deliberate attempt to minimize my profile or just what happens when you live in a really hot country with a lot of dirt roads.

I coexist with bugs. I’d be freaking out back in our land at the giant cockroaches and ants that wander at will around the house. But here I’m trying to just let it go. Nothing’s built airtight in a tropical country, so there’s no way to win this one. However, every now and then I do make my partner sweep a particularly large cockroach out the door, and today we put a towel under the door near the kitchen to stop the stream of ants scouring the ceramic tile for bits of food.

My eating habits have changed.  I was a happy carnivore back in Canada, with a long list of “treat” foods that I indulged in whenever I needed a little pick-me-up. Alas, neither meat nor treats are common here. The best you can say about any baked good here is, “Well, it’s not that terrible.” The chocolate is scarce and mediocre to boot even when you do manage to find any. I have been reduced to buying bags of wrapped caramel candies called “Bianchis” – the only tolerable candy I’ve found in Copan – and eating two or three whenever I feel desperate.

I throw my toilet paper in a garbage can. I don’t know what it is about poor countries, but their bad plumbing seems to be universal. At any rate, you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet here.  I’m not happy about it, but so it goes.

I pour dog food onto my front step every night. Virtually every dog here, owned or stray, is underfed.  I don’t know which dogs are coming by to eat the food I put out, but all of them can use it so it doesn’t matter.

I’ve adjusted my customer-service expectations down, down, down. Things go wrong in Honduras on a regular basis. Resistance is futile.  

Power goes out randomly, sometimes for hours. Bank machine says it gave you $200 when it didn’t, and you know you’ll never see it again.  You pay for two gigabytes on your Internet modem and it runs out in two days, which is not possible but it doesn’t matter. Giant manhole cover collapses in your street and leaves a gaping hole big enough for cars to fall into, and three weeks later the hole’s still there.

You buy the wrong cord for your computer and the store refuses to take it back, receipt or not. People you work for tell you to put together a one-hour PowerPoint presentation for a big meeting and then forget all about you.  Your cellphone stops working because the company wants you to text them your identity number, but you don’t have one because you’re not Honduran.

And yeah, at times it’s all just a little too much. But I can roll with it.

A fuel-efficient fogon rises from the mud

Adan Garcia and Don Antonio Garcia building a fogon

I feel a bit like the family dog at work sometimes, mystified much of the time as to why my workmates are bundling me into the truck to go somewhere but always happy to be taken along. One of my co-workers in particular likes that I take photos of his projects to post to the CASM Facebook site, so I'm getting to go on new adventures pretty much every week now.
Yesterday, we spent the day at a local Copaneco's house building an energy-efficient fogon - a new twist on the wood cooking stoves that are staples in most Honduran homes.
Electricity is scarce and gas is expensive for a population that in many cases gets by on not much more than a buck a day (you don't know "poor" until you see it up close in Honduras). So wood is still the fuel of choice  for poor people - bad news in a country in which more than 60 per cent of the population lives in poverty AND the trees are disappearing at an alarming rate. The other big problem with wood fires is that the poorest families don't even have proper stoves, just blazing-hot fires inside their little mud houses that result in burned children and much lung damage from smoke inhalation.

The small firebox creates lots of heat
while burning 45 per cent less wood.

The fogons that CASM has been helping to build for the last five years cost about $60 each in materials and labour. They are cleverly engineered so that a very small fire box creates a big area of heat for cooking, using 45 per cent less wood. They're hot on the inside and cool on the outside, with a chimney to vent the smoke outside.
I've seen various ones in my travels with CASM, but yesterday was the first time I got to see the construction process from the ground up. And it really is from the ground up, starting with a big mud cube that forms the base of the stove and making use of all kinds of odds and ends during the process that the average dead-broke Honduran might actually have access to.
CASM foots part of the bill, including labour costs, because $60 is way beyond the reach of the people the organization works with. But the person receiving the stove is expected to buy or scrounge up as much of the materials as possible and to participate in the construction.
So we arrived at the one-room adobe home of Adan Garcia to find a fully-formed mud cube behind the house, two buckets of wood ash for packing around the firebox as insulation, a half bucket of cement for the top of the stove, and the big steel plancha used for the cooking surface. The four-person family has a gas stove tucked into their rough little 8x10 house alongside their two beds, but the wife was clearly looking forward to having a cheaper and roomier option out back.

Wood ash is poured into the cavity around the firebox
to keep the stove cool to the touch on the outside.

Adan had been able to buy about a third of the 28 bricks needed for the fogon. We headed off to the construction yard to buy the remainder and then went down to the river to dig a bucket of sand for mixing in with the cement.
The river is the sand and gravel source for everyone in town judging by the amount of pickups, dump trucks and excavators I see down there every day, but it's trickier right now because the river's high in the rainy season. We almost got stuck. Back at Adan's house, Don Antonio Garcia was rolling up his sleeves. He's a whiz from La Cuchilla who has built a lot of fogones on behalf of CASM. He was adept at sticking bricks together with mud while keeping the whole thing level and square, and a master at cutting bricks to size with a machete.

Adan tears a board off his house
for the concrete form

It took about five hours to build the stove. The process attracted quite a crowd of curious men from the neighbourhood, who brought along their tape measures and observed the construction carefully. That's another benefit of such projects: Each one is like a mini-workshop. As he worked Don Antonio also amazed the group with tales of his biodigester back home - another CASM initiative - that transforms the manure from his cow into methane gas for cooking.
When it came time to pour the concrete, I was reminded again how close to the bone life is for so many Hondurans. Adan didn't have enough wood to make the form for the concrete, so he had to pull a couple boards off the structure of his house. The nails that were set into the mud to add strength to the concrete were a mish-mash of bent and crooked things in various shapes and sizes that he'd clearly scrounged. Nobody blinked at any of it; that's just how it is here.

Don Antonio fits the plancha - the cooking surface

It was a day that reminded me what I like best about CASM. They do practical things using whatever's at hand. They add in just enough of their resources and skills to make things possible.

They do projects that teach people new skills so that they in turn can help others build a fuel-efficient fogon in their own back yard, or turn cow manure into cooking fuel. Feet firmly on the ground, common-sense strategies that empower people and make a tough life just a little more bearable. That's how it's done.

The Doctor is in

Un dia grande para mi. I'm feeling overwhelmed - in the best of ways - to have this fine honour bestowed upon me by the University of Victoria. And isn't Facebook just the perfect medium at a time like this, when I get to revel in all the kind comments of my FB pals back home even at this great distance.
Home for a week June 9 to receive my honourary degree and catch up with my family. Until then, nose to the grindstone here in Copan Ruinas, where the rainy season has set in and the new task of the day is to batten down the hatches sometime around 4 or 5 p.m. before the hard rain starts falling. And oh, the thunder - sounds like the sky's ripping open. 

If nothing else, a better night's sleep

Moments ago, I sent the following email to Louis Bachicha, executive vice-president of sales for Sealy Inc. in North America.
I don't know if I found the right email for him and I have no idea if he's the right man to ask for help, let alone if he'll even read this. But I came back from my usual weekend craft day at that sad, fetid foster home that I have had the great misfortune to stumble upon and I just felt like I had to do something. 
Sealy is the biggest manufacturer of mattresses in the world and has plants in El Salvador and Guatemala, both of which border Honduras. Like I told Mr. Bachicha, better beds for these kids will not turn their lives around or save them from what I fear will be much sorrow and deprivation to the end of their days. But it's something, isn't it? 
If you read this and know of a better way to make this happen, a better person at Sealy Inc. to contact, a better mattress or grade of plastic that I should be looking for, I welcome all practical advice. 


Hello, Mr. Bachicha. I'm a Canadian currently living and working in Copan Ruinas, Honduras, as a Cuso International volunteer. I have recently begun helping at what is essentially a permanent foster home for 30 children here in Copan, and I am writing to ask for your advice and guidance. 

Given that Honduras is second only to Haiti in the Americas in terms of poverty, I'm sure you can imagine what state these children live in. I go up there every weekend to do crafts and such with the children, who are desperate for activities, and many days I feel completely helpless to do anything more meaningful for these kids than to sing songs (they love the Hokey Pokey) and make paper garlands with them. This is not a place of hope, and I am quite sure there will be no happy endings for most of these children. 

However, there is one thing that I think I can do that will improve these children's lives a little every single day, and that is to secure 15 of the most durable mattresses out there wrapped in industrial-level plastic, and at least give them a little comfort every night when they go to bed. Right now, the children all sleep in a single room on 15 bunk beds. But in fact so many of the foam mattresses are either shredded, filthy and wet, covered in excrement or otherwise in a state of complete ruin at any given point in time that on Sunday when I was there, I saw that only three beds actually have mattresses on them. 

Three beds for 30 children, which has to mean that most of those children are sleeping on the filthy concrete floor. Even the wood struts for the bunk beds have been broken by heavy, heavy use and no money for repairs, making many of them unusable right now no matter what.

I can figure out how to get those wood struts repaired. I can also raise money for 15 mattresses, and I hope I can also deduce what kind of plastic you'd need to wrap them in to protect the mattresses and make the beds easy to  clean regardless of whether they were assaulted every night with the nervous fingers, restless sleeps, poor bathroom habits and the various illnesses of children ranging in age from infancy to 14 and growing up in intense poverty and deprivation. 

But what I can't figure out is how I'll ever source 15 mattresses close enough to Honduras that I can get them here, or how to get the best price so that I stand a chance of raising that money among my friends in Canada. I need help to know what type of mattress I'm even looking for - I think probably a variety they use in prisons would be most suitable! This foster home/orphanage has virtually no operating funds and is essentially a private facility run by one woman. If I hope to do this, I need to make a very careful purchase that can last for many, many years, because there simply isn't any money in that place for anything beyond the (very) simple diet that these kids eat, and certainly not for replacing mattresses.

And so I'm writing to you. I don't know what you can do, and I'm sure Sealy hears pitches like mine all the time. But I see from your Forbes profile that you're roughly the same age as me, and that we have the shared experience of working in Canada. Perhaps you're a parent, as I am, and regardless I'm sure you're a person whose heart would break just like mine does at the sight of these 30 children growing up in atrocious conditions. You know your business, and perhaps you also know how I might go about finding 15 mattresses that can withstand everything that those children will subject them to.

I hope you can help me get them better beds. It won't change the course of their lives, but I would certainly sleep better knowing that I did something to ensure that at least 8 hours of every day of these kids' lives is a little more comfortable, a little less submerged in filth and disease. Thank you for your consideration. 

Sincerely, Jody Paterson

Accountability for people in crisis

Update: A reader pointed out this May 18 story in the Georgia Straight - certainly adds some interesting B.C. context to my post! 

The organization I work for here in Honduras took me along to a rendición de cuentas yesterday – loosely translated, a surrendering of accounts. It’s basically an exercise in accountability intended for the people who are receiving services.

The practice is common in Honduras, where non-profits like the Comisión de Acción Social Menonita are considered to be serving an impoverished population in a near-constant state of crisis. CASM and its major funders belong to an association that requires its members to adhere to strict standards of accountability and transparency, in recognition of how important those are when delivering aid to impoverished communities during times of crisis and disaster.  Things could go badly wrong after an earthquake, for example, if aid agencies gave first priority to friends and family.

It’s not a process that sees much application in Canada, where mega-disasters are thankfully scarce. But as I sat there watching my co-worker’s PowerPoint yesterday in La Cuchilla (baby turkeys underfoot, projector running off the battery of the truck we’d driven up in because the electricity was out for the day) it struck me that perhaps it ought to be for agencies serving people living homeless, who certainly meet the test of being an impoverished population in a near-constant state of crisis.

When I was doing work with the issues of homelessness in Victoria, one complaint I heard repeatedly from those living on the street was that a “homeless industry” had sprung up around them. Rightly or wrongly, people on the streets were of the opinion that too much government money was being channelled toward well-paid jobs for those tasked with solving homelessness rather than into housing and services for those in crisis.

I had no idea how to respond to such accusations, because who could say? Non-profits in Canada have to release a yearly financial statement to the public as part of their annual general reports, but not in the kind of detail that these people were looking for.  And there’s no denying that opportunities for favouritism exist in the delivery of crisis services to Canada’s homeless population, where staff perceptions of “bad” or “undeserving” behaviour in a client can literally leave a person out in the cold.

In a rendición de cuentas like the one I attended yesterday, the people receiving services get a detailed presentation on how project money is spent, right down to the salaries of project staff and how much of the funds were spent directly on services to the people. If anyone wants to get even more specific, my co-worker had an itemized list specifying the benefits received in that community during the two years of the project. Families A, B and C got help to build new wood stoves. Families D, E, F and G got chicken coops.  Senor Valdez got a biodigester. Senora Machorro got a pen for her pigs. You get the picture.

I know, I know – no confidentiality. Canadian social-service organizations are very big on confidentiality. But it’s hard to be truly accountable to the people you serve without some specifics. When homeless organizations in Victoria start talking broadly about how they helped 1,500 people get off the street in the past year, you can hardly blame the ones still out there for wanting to know just who got housed. They’re looking around and not seeing much change, which just fuels their suspicion that something funny’s going on.

I’m not suggesting that something funny IS going on, of course. Non-profits work hard for the money, and have to be accountable to their funders and donors.  But public accountability to the people you’re serving – that’s a heck of a good idea.

Charities are expected to hold themselves to a higher standard of accountability when serving poor, distressed people in the developing nations of the world. Why shouldn’t the same be true in wealthy countries like Canada? Those living in poverty and crisis are literally at the mercy of those funded to provide aid. Let’s get those cards on the table.