A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

There is something of an eternal summer feeling to life in Honduras, which suits me just fine. I spent much of my Canadian summers in a state of mild anxiety, trying to pack as much outdoor time as possible into the scant weekends when the days were warm enough for the beach. No more. But while the warm days are virtually a constant here in Copan, the seasons do change. They bring different birds, different bugs, more or less leaves on the trees, a different feel to the day.  Copanecos consider this time of year to be "winter," because it rains more. But whatever they want to call it, it's summer.  The flowering trees are in full bloom, the vegetation is lush and green. Young birds are everywhere, having hatched in the last couple of months and grown big enough to be testing out their wings and making those distinct and somewhat abrasive feed-me calls common to young birds the world over.  The lizards clearly come into their own in the rainy season as well. The...

I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore when I read a story not too long ago in one of the Honduran papers in which the leading medical expert on mental illness in the country described bipolar disorder as a "split personality," with one personality prone to committing violent acts.  Yesterday, there was a column in  La Prensa  defending the government's 2005 decision to prohibit gay people from adopting children. The writer noted it was a well-known fact that if gay people raise children, the children often turn gay themselves. Uh-huh. Such blatant falsehoods have started me reflecting on how other countries managed to grow past similarly uninformed and harmful points of view. You need the will, of course, but you also need the mechanisms for combating ignorance. Honduras is really lacking on that front.  In Canada, we like to gripe about our governments and their lack of attention to the things we care about. Admittedly, virtually any social progress requires m...

As part of my communications work for the Comision de Accion Social Menonita, I decided I'd do an English-language Facebook page for CASM. I figured I could highlight some of the work of the organization as well as share stories about Honduras that offered an alternative to the endless murder-and-mayhem headlines that come out of this country. Alas, it is unbelievably hard to find stories about Honduras that are even neutral, let alone positive. I've never seen a country in more dire need of good PR than this place. I mean, there are definitely problems here, but the single story line coming out of Honduras really does a disservice to this poor country. As if it wasn't bad enough to be branded the "murder capital of the world" due to all the violence in the drug trade here, it seems that barely a month can go by without some other totally weird tragedy putting Honduras into the world's headlines. Since we arrived in January, there has been a massive pr...

Not surprisingly, the number of acquaintances commenting to me that they, too, have been thinking of international volunteering has been rising with each grey, cold summer day everybody seems to be experiencing back in B.C. right now.  I highly recommend it, and not just because I'm sitting here right now with the warm Honduran breeze blowing in on me from the wide open door and my memories of being cold and bummed out by the Victoria weather fading fast. If you like to shake things up in your life, experience a whole new way of doing things and put your skills to work in places where they’re really, really needed, this is the ticket. But before you send your application off to   Cuso International   or whatever organization has caught your eye, I’d recommend an honest self-assessment to make sure you really do have that “flexibility and adaptability” that any international volunteer agency worth its salt is looking for in its long-term volunteers. Be sure ...

Basilica at Esquipulas as a storm brews   Photos can be deceptive. They're like a little slice of the good life, with the unpleasant bits that surrounded the moment unrepresented. You take the shot of the beautiful basilica glowing white against a storm-darkened sky, for instance, not the one of you looking slightly green after being jammed into a truck for hours and hours questioning why you even came on this crazy outing.  Earlier today I posted several cheery photos on Facebook of my day trip to Guatemala yesterday with my workmates. The photos elicited the usual "Wow!"s and "Lucky you!"s that travel photos inspire, and of course I do acknowledge that living and working somewhere that allows me to take a free day trip to Guatemala is pretty damn lucky. And that basilica did look amazing. But now I want to give you the rest of the story - not to elicit sympathy, but just so you know how the day actually played out. My workmates do something fun togeth...