When it's all up to you

One of the things I don’t expect to get used to about life in a poor country is witnessing suffering without being able to do much about it.

No country is free of suffering, of course. Abuse, isolation, cruelty, hunger – there’s nowhere in the world that gets a free pass on such things.

But at least in countries like Canada and the U.S., there’s some organization or government body that you can protest to, some cage to rattle on behalf of whatever suffering person or animal has got your attention. Not here.

Yesterday morning, for instance, I came across a bony, sick horse while on one of my bird rambles in the hills. She had several festering sores on her back that were covered in flies, which she couldn’t even brush away because her tail was snarled around a big thorny stick she’d picked up while wandering through the bushes.

Back in the city where I came from, I can think of five or six different groups I could phone to do something about a sick, abandoned horse. Victoria responds to suffering animals with significantly more compassion than it does to suffering people, so with only a couple of phone calls I could probably get a poor old horse like that a front-page media story, immediate veterinary care and a happy new home before day’s end.

Here, the best I could do was approach the wary horse gently from behind and pull the thorn stick out of her tail. Even if I’d had a halter at the ready and a place to lead her, chances are she has an owner – a lot of the pathetic, starved looking livestock and pets around Copan have owners, many of them rather pathetic and starved-looking themselves – who wouldn’t take kindly to me leading his horse away. And it’s not like there’s an SPCA to lodge a complaint with or to step up with a home for an underfed horse.

I saw a skinny pig a couple weeks ago on one of the subsistence farms I visited through my work, drained by the eight piglets it was nursing. Trust me, you never want to see a skinny pig. Any creature that has just given birth around here – pig, dog, cow or impoverished villager – tends to look pretty skeletal. Virtually every day I see hungry-looking people and animals that could really use a good meal, a hot bath and a few kind words.

But there’s nobody to come to their rescue. There’s me and whatever resources I might be able to bring to a situation in the moment, and any other passing strangers who react in similar ways. I’m certainly not alone in trying to step up to alleviate some of the unnecessary suffering that goes on here, but it still comes down to one person and whatever they're able to do.

There’s no organized animal rescue. No real children’s welfare organization. No shelters or food programs, no rights organizations battling on behalf of neglected horses, exploited women, hungry children, desperate families. In truth, there’s no one to go to battle with anyway, because the Honduras government really doesn’t have much interest in any of this stuff and can handle public shaming with barely a blink.
 My socially minded acquaintances would probably tell me that all anyone can do in this world is “plant seeds” and do the best they can. I’m there philosophically, but such sentiments aren’t much comfort in the moment, when you’re looking at a horse facing death from starvation and infection and all you can do is pull a stick out of its tail. Or press 20 lempiras into the hand of the old, old woman with the arthritic knees. Or take young orphans to a swimming pool every couple of weeks, as if that alone could ever change the course of their sad, challenged lives.

A person has to try, of course. It’s you or nothing, after all. You quickly feel the weight of personal responsibility here in Honduras.

On the upside, it’s always good to know what you’re capable of. In my old life, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have stood within easy kicking distance of a strange horse and pulled on its tail. I doubt I would have pulled five ticks off a neighbourhood dog that paused on our patio for food. I certainly wouldn’t have spent hours in a pool entertaining young children I’m not related to.

Last summer, I came across a wounded seagull lying on a lawn near my house in Victoria. I carried him home in complete confidence that I would find some animal-welfare organization to collect the gull and look after it until it healed, because that’s how it is in the land where I come from. And of course, that’s exactly what happened (thank you, Wild ARC).

I bet the hungry families and neglected animals of Honduras would get quite a rueful laugh out of that story. Pick-up vet service for a dime-a-dozen gull, and they can’t even count on their next meal. I’m grateful for how much we care for our own in Canada, but sometimes it just makes you more aware of how little there is for the rest of the world. 

Finally made the acquaintance of an albanil

It's a happy, happy day - not only did I just meet with a real live albanil just now, but we went up to the Angelitos Felices children's home and actually did a tour of the disastrous bathrooms I'm hoping to fix up.
I was griping rather heavily in my last post about the impossibility of finding an albanil - a mason, the trade that does bathroom work here in Honduras because everything's made out of concrete. But a North Carolina fellow who is with Paramedics for Children and his Copan-connected employee Marco Tulios came through today, introducing me to Nelson Rodriguez.
The four of us went up to Angelitos to take a look at what's needed, which turns out to be total renos in the two bathrooms and a big new water tank on the roof so that the home has an adequate supply. Nelson supervised the bathroom renos at one of the big schools in Copan with 1,000 students, and vows he knows how to build a bathroom that's built to last. And that's exactly what Angelitos needs, what with 30 or 40 kids (some living there permanently, others attending day care) giving those two shabby, inadequate bathrooms a workout every single day.
I'm bracing for the estimate, but am really looking forward to seeing that project underway. Trust me, it only takes one peek into the filthy, broken, waterless "bathroom" that the children use the most to keep a person motivated, whatever the price. At least I'm able to put off my original mattress project for a bit seeing as somebody else stepped up on that front and put in some skinny, plastic-wrapped colchones that will do for now.
Life does indeed take a person in unexpected directions. Here I am, getting ready to supervise bathroom renovations at a foster home in Honduras. Who'd have thought?

And to think I thought it was about the money

Everyone who has lived in a foreign country warns you of the challenges of adjusting to a different culture. I'm living that right now, stuck in the incomprehensible process of looking for someone to do repairs at the children's home I'm involved with.
I know things get done here in Honduras, because I see them happening. But how you make them happen - ah, now there's the question.
At least a dozen men have been occupied for weeks building a massive and intricate rock wall around a house near my workplace. They look like they know what they're doing. Every day I see a constant flurry of construction activity in the centre of Copan Ruinas - buildings coming down, new ones going up, renovations all over the place. And virtually any male Copaneco I've met in my six months here knows how to do basic home repairs or even fix his own vehicle.
So yes, this place has skilled workers. But can I get any of them to call me? Can I get anyone even just to tell me the name of someone who knows how to renovate a bathroom or hang a new door? Nope.
Silly me, I thought the challenge was going to be finding the money for a few badly needed fixups at the Angelitos Felices guardaria . That turned out to be the easy part. What's much, much harder is identifying who will do the work.
Back in Canada, I'd be flipping through the Yellow Pages or talking to friends who'd had work done. Make a couple phone calls, agree on a price, off we'd go. But there's no handy listing of qualified contractors anywhere here in Copan, and nobody in my small circle of acquaintances who appears to be in any hurry to share the secrets of securing a contractor.
Sure, they all tell me they know somebody. But that's part of the culture, too - say what you need to say in the moment to get the person asking you questions to go away. I've learned that in Honduras, just because a person tells you they know somebody who can help doesn't mean they actually do, and it definitely doesn't mean they're going to get that person to call you anytime soon.
So far I've tried my boss, a co-worker, my otherwise-helpful neighbour, my landlord, a Texan who has lived here for 15 years, and a local who the Texan recommended as a trustworthy, get-'er-done kind of guy. Every one of them said they knew somebody, and that they'd get the person to call me.
But the days and weeks pass, and nobody ever calls.
Today, I went to the hardware store and in desperation asked the woman who owns the place - another neighbour of mine - if she knew of anyone who does plumbing work or can hang a door. No, she said. Nothing more than that, just "no." I heard the clerk beside her whisper something into her ear about somebody named Eddie being a possibility, but my neighbour just turned away to serve another customer.
I mean, every day they must have tradespeople coming into that store for supplies. Why can't I have one? How can it be this hard, in a poor country with scary unemployment rates, to find somebody who wants a job?
I remember visiting the zocalo in Mexico City years ago and spotting a huge line of  day labourers along one of the fences, each with a big sign saying what type of work they were good at. I have a new appreciation for such a system. I fear I'm heading for a repeat of how it went when we needed a place to live in Copan, a process that turned out to involve wandering through small convenience stores asking random strangers if they knew of any houses for rent.
And this is just to get somebody to go to the children's home and give me a quote for the work. I shudder to think what challenges might await once the work is actually underway. Another Texan who has been in Copan for 15 years (there appears to be a few of those here) cautioned me to not only get everything in writing but to make the contractor repeat aloud, at least twice, all my instructions for the project. And not to pay for anything in advance.
But I've always said I like a challenge, so best to quit whinging and just get on with it. Flow like water, I keep telling myself: Hit a barrier, flow around it. Maybe I'll stop by the rock-wall project tomorrow and see if anyone knows a plumber. 

Young people step up for Honduran children

Lunch at the pool yesterday, courtesy of Charrissa

I've always known there were exceptional young people doing volunteer work in the challenged countries of the world, but it's been heartening to see so many of them in action here in Copan Ruinas.
Like me, a lot of them have ended up helping out at the children's guardaria here in Copan, where about 40 children are cared for in rough conditions (some live there, others are in day care).
I recently met three young Americans who stumbled upon Angelitos Felices last year when they were on holiday here and then came back this summer for several weeks specifically to volunteer their time at the home every day. Another fellow from Stockton, Calif. was here in early June doing the same thing, overseeing a small construction project at Angelitos in an attempt to rectify at least some of the many structural problems the place has.
The young woman who introduced me to Angelitos four months ago, Emily Monroe, is a particular force for good at Angelitos. She's a go-getter from Pittsburgh who has been in Copan almost two years teaching English at the American-run Mayatan Bilingual School.
She has finished that work but is staying on in the community for another year or so to realize a really big dream of hers: To build a bigger, better home in Copan for children like the kids at Angelitos, one that not only provides food and shelter but more support in all the areas children need help with to grow into healthy, happy and productive adults. (Read more about her project and how you can support her here.)
Emily has played a major role in introducing other travellers to Angelitos and helping them find ways to use their skills to support the children. I've started to think of her as the "hub" for all of us - the one who knows everything that's going on at the place and puts in time to help us connect our collective efforts for maximum impact.
A young woman from New Zealand, Charrissa Taylor, arrived in town recently to spend five months volunteering four days a week at Angelitos, doing child-development activities with the children under five. There'd be no such thing at the home if it weren't for her.
She and Emily are regulars at the every-other-Sunday swims that Paul and I are doing with the kids. And they often bring along other young travellers who don't hesitate to jump into the pool to lead a game of Simon Says with the children, or to swim back and forth with various young ones hanging from their necks (a favourite activity).

Today Emily shared the blog of Kristen Pierce, a young woman from South Carolina who has returned home after a month at Angelitos and is now doing her best to get back here as soon as she can to do more with the children.

 "If an animal craves attention, how much more so a human being?" writes Kristen. "This is what I find to be the most necessary element missing from the children’s lives: love. Everything is a competition, everything a struggle, because there are not enough people to go around to love them all. Each is precious, special, individual, but who is there to find out about it, to really see them?"

It's an honour to meet these young people. They're down here spending their money and their time on challenges that I imagine are far-removed from their own childhood experiences. Some come because their personal faith compels them, but many come simply because they see the vast needs of these children and just can't turn away.

Nobody arranges to bring these young volunteers here. Nobody gives them a handbook on what to do once they arrive. They just listen to their hearts, and lovely things happen.

(Find Emily on Facebook here. And as long as you're there, why not "like" her Casitas Copan page?)

The hard work of being poor

The young woman walks this dirt road twice a day, 90 minutes each way. She carries her nine-month-old baby in her arms while her two other children - seven and four - follow behind. Seven days a week, they walk from their mud house in La Pintada to the park in Copan Ruinas, where they sell corn husk dolls to tourists  for a dollar apiece.
It's a tough way to make a living. On a really good day, the family might sell 10 dolls. But the woman says there are many days when she doesn't sell any. She not only has to contend with the struggling tourist economy in Copan, but compete with all the other women and children from her village who walk to the park every day as well to sell their own corn husk dolls.
Life is hard for the poor in any developing country. But in the second-poorest country in the Western hemisphere, it's brutal. People work long hours for little money, and in many cases start and end each day with walks of two hours or more just to get to their work site.
I regularly run into Rumilda on my bird walks in the hills, a Maya-Chorti woman in her 70s whose daily round-trip journey to sell tortillas or corn in the Copan public market takes her five or six hours. It didn't used to take that long, but her knees are bad now and she has to take a lot of rests along the way.
She's got family in the aldea where she lives, but they're no better off than she is. Everybody has to work, and every precious lempira gets spent. Some development agencies working in Honduras like to talk about the need to encourage a "saving culture" in the country, but I wouldn't count on that idea taking hold anytime soon. People don't have enough money for today, let alone tomorrow.
The per-capita gross domestic product in Honduras is $3,448. Mexicans look rich by comparison at $12,429, and wealthy countries like the U.S. and Canada have rates that are more than 10 times higher than Honduras.
But that $3,400 figure is just what comes out when you add everything up and divide by eight million people. There are many, many Hondurans who earn much less than $3,400 a year. That's particularly true in rural areas, where three-quarters of the country's poorest citizens live. One in four households in Honduras has to get by on the equivalent of $1.25 US a day - less than $500 a year.
I suspect the corn husk doll vendors of La Pintada are in that category. Could there ever be enough tourists to buy all those corn husk dolls clutched in the hands of sad-eyed children dogging the heels of every gringo who passes through the park?
I'm pretty sure the elderly Nueva Esperanza man who walks countless kilometres every day to find firewood to sell is also in that category. His poor old neck is so bent from his heavy load that he can't even look straight ahead anymore - just down to those dirt roads beneath his feet. It's not uncommon to see whole families emerging from narrow trails through the forest with big bundles of wood on their shoulders, scavenged from the increasingly bare-looking hillsides around here to be sold in the street.
A half a block away from our house in Copan, I'm getting to know Doris, the cheerful native of San Pedro Sula who makes the best baleadas in town. She has been in Copan for a year now, and does well enough in her little restaurant to afford the $100 rent for the commercial space and another $100 for her home. But that's only because she works seven days a week, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. She's been doing that for 30 years.
Stories of deprivation from poor countries are nothing new, of course. But here's what's unsettling about the situation in Honduras: Poverty is worsening. In the last 20 years, the country has seen a 15 per cent increase in the number of people living below the national poverty line. More than two-thirds of Hondurans are now below that line.
That news probably wouldn't come as much of a surprise to the people who live here. They're well aware of how poor they are. But where exactly is this struggling country going? While other Latin American slowly make progress, Honduras is losing ground.

Sources for the statistics in this post: International Human Development Index; U.S.Congressional Research Service; World Vision; International Fund forAgricultural Development; Index Mundi (various sources)