Where disaster is just a matter of time

Workshop in Guaramal II

The 14 students of Escuela Anardo Napoleon Mata listen attentively as the woman at the front of the one-room school quizzes them about how they'll respond in an emergency.
Will they jostle each other on the way out the door if an earthquake is shaking the mud walls of the school down? "No!" Will they exaggerate how badly injured somebody is should they need to go looking for help? "No!" Do they know who heads up the Comité Emergencia Escolar in their tiny village? "La maestra!"
We're in Guaramal II, one of 20 isolated villages around Copan Ruinas where my organization works. Emergency preparedness is a significant part of the work done by the Comision de Accion Social Menonita, and on this day CASM is here giving workshops to the 15 families who live in Guaramal II on managing risk during a natural disaster.
That there will be a natural disaster sooner or later is a given. This is the rainy season in Honduras, and rain can be torrential in the hills. Villagers are at constant risk of roads, houses, livestock and crops being washed away when the rains come pounding down on the steep slopes where they live, a problem they've inadvertently worsened by cutting down the forests on those slopes to make way for their subsistence corn crops.

Earthquake evacuation practice

And while North Americans can generally assume that somebody will come to save them in the event of a natural disaster, the villagers of Honduras know otherwise. The residents of Guaramal II and several other villages regularly lose contact with the rest of the world whenever the Rio Negro is running high and the makeshift road that cuts across the river bed is impassable. The village is only 25 kilometres away from touristy Copan Ruinas, but it's a long, hard hour to cover that distance, and it might as well be a thousand miles away given that few of the villagers have vehicles anyway.
There's electricity here, but the power failures are frequent in Honduras at the best of times and a certainty in periods of heavy rain. If you're lucky, you might get a weak cell phone signal in Guaramal. But don't count on it.
Through projects funded by Diakonia and Christian Aid - two of the European faith-based organizations that fund a significant amount of the development work in Honduras - CASM has been working to get communities better prepared for when disaster strikes. Hurricane Mitch killed almost 15,000 Hondurans in 1998, and nobody in the country will forget that anytime soon.
In the schools, the preparation takes the form of Comites Emergencias Escolares, headed by the teacher at each village school and focused on getting students to safety as quickly as possible. In the communities, CASM has developed Comites de Emergencia Local (CODEL). Hondurans like acronyms, and so the CODEL committee members focus on the details of EDAN - evaluating damages, analysing needs.
At the workshop this week, CASM employee Carmen Elisa Recarte encouraged people to think about how they'd priorize their response in the event of a disaster.
Would it be more urgent to replace the roof of the school or the roof of the community health centre, for instance? People in the room were slow to respond, but perhaps it was something of a theoretical question in a village that has neither of those things. The "school" is in fact just an out-building that a resident is allowing to be used for classes, and the nearest health centre is a 40-minute drive away.
The group gets the hang of things after a while, though. They agree they'd priorize rescue services for elderly residents and anyone who is incapacitated. They're not sure what they'd do about contaminated water; that's an ongoing problem in the village at the best of times. But they do know the name of the community leader charged with heading up evacuation and rescue, and they've got a plan for getting villagers to safety. That's more than they had before.
Like every village workshop I've been to in Honduras, this one is interrupted regularly by restless toddlers, crying babies and many chickens and dogs wandering through. But the audience seems to have better attention skills than I do, and by the end of the afternoon they are very clear on why they need a disaster-management plan: To save lives.
In a country where so many lives hang on the thinnest of threads, that's challenge enough.

It's Hokey Pokey Time

Fellow blogger, activist and musician Ross K - better known to his many blog fans as The Gazetteer - asked me to post a video of me and the kids from Angelitos Felices doing the Hokey Pokey.
Ross has been a great supporter of Paul and I on our adventures in Honduras, and just the fact that he puts my blog on his blog list brings a lot more readers to my site. I've been promising him a video of me playing the accordion here in Honduras that I've yet to make good on, so I felt a responsibility to get Hokey Pokeying without too much delay.
So here it is, Ross, from me to you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDZJwNOKMB8. And thanks again for being such a good blog buddy. 

Development aid for the wealthy

 Development dollars understandably target the poorest people in countries like Honduras. It's human instinct to want to provide help where the need is most intense.
But the more I get to know the scene here, the more I think the country needs a project that targets wealthy Hondurans. I just don't see how there will ever be enough development dollars to lift this country out of its problems unless the rich people and the government here shift their thinking.

What do rich Honduras...

What makes the rich people of the world assume some responsibility for helping the less fortunate? Some just have big hearts, sure. But mostly they pony up either because they're taxed as a condition of living and working in a particular country, or because they see a benefit from donating.
In Honduras, there's little evidence that eitherof those motivations exist. In a country that essentially operates as an aristocracy, rich Hondurans tend to be connected people who are much less likely to have to pay taxes than their impoverished counterparts. There's no system for charitable tax receipts; even the system for ascertaining charitable status for an organization seems a bit suspect.

...owe to the poor?

And if there's peer pressure among rich Hondurans to give to the less fortunate - or even fund community projects - it's low-profile to the point of invisibility. Every now and then you read of somebody forking over a donation to a hospital, but you don't see the big gifts of parkland, theatres, memorial classrooms or grand bequests like you do in the U.S. and Canada.
So what you end up with is the rich living up there in the creamy layer, with their mansions and their Hummers and their armed guards, while down below the big aid organizations from developed countries in lands far away dole out hundreds of millions of dollars a year so that the nearly 70 per cent of Hondurans living in poverty can eke out the most pathetic of livings.
Something's really wrong with that picture. Thank God for development dollars - in many cases literally, seeing as much of the development work in Honduras is done by faith-based non-profits operating on funds from Christian aid organizations in Europe. But surely foreign aid is meant to be an add-on to a country's own efforts to set itself right, not the sole source of development funds.
 How can more rich Hondurans be encouraged to engage in the work of bringing Honduras out of  chronic poverty? It's galling to see foreign countries doing all the heavy lifting with so little help from the people who have done very well in Honduras.
I think it's best if rich people talk to rich people about things like this, so in my dream project I'd gather the wealthy philanthropists from other countries to create a strategy for engaging the big earners in Honduras. Let's start with a committee made up of a few of the people that Barron's lists as the 25 most effective givers. They've clearly got it going on.
Of course, you can't just show up in a foreign country demanding that rich people give more money to charity. The plan will need to be highly strategic and long-term. But wealthy philanthropists are all about strategic and long-term. I'm sure they've all thought long and hard about their own motivations for giving, and could be invaluable in crafting messages and incentives that might pry some lempiras out of the hands of Honduras's millionaires.
Meanwhile, democratic governments in Canada,  the U.S. and Europe can do their part by applying a little friendly government-to-government pressure.
They do it all  the time when the mood suits them, sometimes by threatening to withhold aid money (not that I'm in favour of that, seeing as the only ones who get hurt are the poor sods at the bottom of the economy), sometimes by making noises about emerging markets and the need to have exemplary partners. What would be so wrong with using a little international bullying to get the Honduran government to tax its wealthy citizens as well as its poor ones, and to ease up on the free ride it gives to the country's most powerful corporations?
For one thing, it's only fair. No country should get away with heavy reliance on development dollars from other countries while its richest citizens are free to pocket enormous wealth without so much as a guilty second thought.
For another, a country trying to climb out of the hole solely based on project dollars from foreign donors is doomed to failure. Short of revolution - and we all know how touch-and-go that can be - how can a country ever stabilize its economy and build a better future without engaging the people with all the power and money?
A development project for the rich and powerful. Now there's an idea whose time has come.

On-line donations for Angelitos now possible - and thanks for asking!

Thank you to all the people who have been asking me how they could help with the work Paul and I are doing to try to support the 40 children being cared for at the Angelitos Felices foster home here in Copan Ruinas. I've now set up a page through gofundme.com that sets out our specific fundraising goals and allows people to donate on-line. Sorry I can't offer a tax receipt, though - that's solely an option for registered charities in Canada and the U.S. (and if you'd prefer that route, please check out our Cuso fundraising page).
The gofundme site takes an admin fee of about 8.5 per cent on donations - 5 per cent off the top, 3.5 per cent through PayPal for the service of being able to collect and withdraw on-line donations. If  you don't like the idea of that, you can always send a cheque to my mother's house and save the admin fee - just drop me a line at jodypatersonmobile@gmail.com and I'll send you her address!
I'm new at this and very conscious that accountability is a big issue when I'm taking other people's money. You have my promise that every penny beyond the site admin fees will go to the children of Angelitos Felices. There's now a big button up there on the right-hand side of my blog that connects to the new site - I'll be posting lots of photos and updates to keep people informed and connected. 

I can see (slightly) more clearly now

How can I help? Such a big question. Still puzzling over that one as we head into our seventh month in this challenged country, but today I finally felt like some of the pieces might be starting to come together. 

We came down here with Cuso International, which emphasizes "capacity-building" when placing volunteers. In other words, you're not here to do the day-to-day work of the organization you're placed with, but to put your skills to work helping them do their work more effectively. The goal is to leave the organization you work with in a stronger position than before you came. 

I think that same approach is going to stand me in good stead for my projects on the side in Copan. There are always going to be times when what's needed is simply an extra pair of hands, but if I can tackle some of the bigger stuff with an eye to the long-term benefits that will last after I'm gone, I think that would be the best use of my two years here. 

I've spent many hours puzzling over how I was going to do that for the foster home I was introduced to back in April, Angelitos Felices. I go there pretty much every Sunday and have some fun with the kids, and I recognize that counts for something. But when you're standing in the midst of children living in a place like that - no beds, rag-tag clothes that never fit, barely enough food - you can't help but want to do better than just popping around once a week to sing several rounds of the Hokey Pokey and hand out crayons. 

The bed thing really bothers me, and I had a big plan to find hospital mattresses that would be durable, easy to clean and a better alternative than the poor little guys sleeping on the dirty concrete floor like they do now.  That seemed like something I could do that would make a lasting difference in the lives of these kids.

But I haven't gotten anywhere on my inquiries. So I've now moved on to Plan B, which involves buying regular foam mattresses that are available here in Copan and wrapping them in this super-durable plastic they sell in San Pedro Sula for making biodigestors. I figure if there's a plastic that can withstand intense Honduran sunlight and the constant heat of fermenting cow manure - the sausage-shaped biodigestors are used on small farms here to transform manure into methane gas for cooking - it should be tough enough to handle 30 kids and all the urine, poo, vomit and fidgety hands they can muster for several years. 

On the up side, I can probably do the project for less than $1,000 if I do it this way, compared to $1,000 for each hospital mattress even if I did get so lucky as to get even one mattress company to reply to my inquiries. On the down side, I am imagining how it's going to go when the time comes for me and my partner to wrestle 30 foam mattresses into heavy-duty plastic (which handily comes in tube form) and seal the ends using a candle. Not pretty. 

I think I can also scrounge around for money for a ceramic-tile floor for the big, empty room where the kids spend 90 per cent of their time. Right now it's dirty, painted concrete - hard to clean, scabby-looking, and definitely worsening the general grimness of the place. It's not like a new floor will turn anybody's lives around, but a better living environment for kids that spend so many hours trapped inside seems like a good investment. 

Perhaps there's also an opportunity to do some relationship-building between Angelitos and the international medical community that runs clinics here, because there sure are a lot of  medical needs among the kids at the home. The public health care here is scant and somewhat sketchy, and chronic health conditions go untreated all the time because nobody has the money for medications.

And then there's short-term stuff I can help with: Swims at the pool every couple of weeks; crafts and songs; help with staples like eggs, cheese, laundry soap, disposable diapers. That's not really capacity-building, because the goods stop coming as soon as I'm no longer here. But I have a secret hope that I can rebuild some of the broken connections between the home and the Copan community along the way that will carry on once my Honduran adventure wraps up. When people see you doing good deeds, sometimes it puts them in more of a mood for such things as well. 

Then there's corporate sponsors. After my lack of progress on finding a mattress company that would even send me so much as a thanks-for-your-inquiry email - and all I wanted was a chance to buy their product -  - I'm keeping my expectations in check on this front. But still, you'd think that a company like Nestle's or Kimberley Clark (respective makers of Nido milk products and Huggies diapers, dominant brands here) might have a heart for kids with absolutely nothing. At any rate, it never hurts to ask. 

I'm looking into on-line fundraising options, like gofundme.com, in order to have a slightly more professional donating option for some of my friends who want to help. Right now all I can do is suggest they send a cheque made out to me to my mother's address in Victoria, which seems quite lame. It's nice people trust me to do the right thing, but I'd really like to be able to demonstrate more accountability and get more specific about the projects that are catching my eye. 

Thank you to the readers with experience in some of this work, who've been very generous with their advice.  Little by little, a plan is taking shape.