Pulperia dreamin'

Somebody told me a few months after we moved here that Honduran women often long to have their own corner store.

I thought it a strange thing to say at the time. But it makes more sense now that I see how impermanent the work culture is here. I’m betting that it’s not racks of little chip bags or a cooler full of giant bottles of Coke that gets a Honduran woman hankering to open her own pulperia. It’s economic stability.

The days of 35 years and a gold watch have been over for a while now in virtually every country, what with free trade having unleashed a new kind of work culture that just moves around the globe to whatever country has the hungriest workers willing to work for the cheapest wages. No job is a sure thing anymore, wherever you live.

But the sheer uncertainty of any job in Honduras - well, that would set me to dreaming of economic stability as well were I a Honduran woman trying to keep my bills paid and my kids fed, clothed and educated over the long term. Even the “good” jobs here are often year-to-year at best, and there’s a lot of work that’s literally one day at a time.

An example: The situation for my Honduran co-workers at the non-profit where I volunteer. Their jobs are the envy of many, seeing as they earn the equivalent of $500-700 a month and enjoy comfortable working conditions. But they’re still working year to year under contracts that never go past Dec. 31.

I didn’t know that until last month, when I went to the annual spiritual retreat for the organization and watched everybody getting handed the standard form letter that all employees get in December. It’s more or less a “Dear John” letter: Thanks for your service, your contract’s done.  Apparently it’s common practice among many Honduran non-profits, many of which opt to meet the letter of the law by giving people an additional month's pay every year without having to keep them on longer-term contracts.

The lucky ones end up getting their contracts renewed. But there are no guarantees.  A person could work for the same organization for 10 years and still be gone just like that in Year 11.

Nor are you treated gently when the end comes. One woman who works out of the same office as me got a terse email at 5 p.m. on the final day before the Christmas holiday informing her that she was done after three years on the job. Her project continues for another year or two, but she’s no longer the one leading it.

And those are the good jobs. Two million Hondurans count on seasonal income from the coffee harvest, but that work is brief, frequently involves travelling long distances, and pits you against the nimble fingers of legions of children whose parents send them into the coffee fields every year in hopes of boosting the paltry family income.

Move to the city and you might land a job in one of the maquilas – the international factories that have benefited the most from free trade. But those employers get a special exemption so they don't have to pay the minimum wage (which is damn minimal in Honduras, as little as $1 an hour). Maybe you can find a service job, but prepare for long hours, low pay, and more of that chronic insecurity. The young man who manages the pool where I like to swim works at least nine hours a day, seven days a week. Christmas came and went for him without so much as an afternoon off.

Back in Canada, we tend to think of “good” jobs as being the due of those who are focused, flexible and attentive to their studies. Here, you can be all those things and still get nowhere. 

One young friend who works in administration has spent every weekend for the last four years going to college in a town that’s a slow two-hour bus ride away. She figures she needs at least two more years of study before she has enough qualifications to land a better job. And it could very likely be a year-to-year job even then. 

One of these days, she might just wake up to find herself ready to give it all up and open a pulperia. Who’d blame her?

Hard times coming as coffee production falls by half

Sesemil producers pack coffee beans for sale in Copan

There’s no avoiding the earthy, acrid smell of wet coffee cherries these days if you’re walking any of the dirt roads winding through the hills of Copan.  It’s the smell of money for Hondurans, who count on the annual coffee harvest from their small plots of land to provide their families with enough money to get them through the year.   

That’s a risky dependency any time you’ve got a commodity whose prices bob up and down as much as coffee. But climate change is adding a whole new layer of risk, bringing plagues and uncertain growing conditions to torment small coffee producers with little ability to ride out rough times.

Producers knew going into the current harvest season that they were up against a persistent fungus that has been spreading with abandon through a widely grown strain of coffee plant, says the administrator of an agricultural co-operative of organic coffee growers based in Copan Ruinas, Wilson Colindres. Work is already underway to develop and plant more resistant strains to slow the spread of la roya.

 But the impact is turning out to be much worse than anyone expected, Colindres said when I talked to him last week at the co-operative's offices in Sesesmil, Copan.  He fears the 2012-13 harvest season will be the worst in the co-operative’s history, with production down by half for the 39 Copan and Comayagua growers who belong to the 12-year-old co-op.

Coffee has been a very good fit for the country up until now.  Honduras’s legions of small producers operate with little margin for error, but coffee thrives on Honduras’s forested slopes without the need for costly irrigation systems or major interventions as long as a grower pays attention to soil quality and plant regeneration. The clockwork nature of Honduras’s rainy season was also good for coffee-growing, as it always started in early May and continued with heavy daily afternoon rains right through June. Coffee plants set a lot of fruit when they’re getting both heat and plenty of rain.

The healthy plant on the left looks strikingly different than
the defoliated plants all around it

But all that’s changing, says Colindres. Now, the country’s rainy season starts later and ends earlier every year. What used to be a daily rain has now diminished to rain every third or fourth day.  With the soil now drying out in between rains, conditions are ideal for the spread of la roya spores.  The fungus kills off the leaves of coffee plants, which stunts growth and decreases yields.

This year’s yields have been dramatically affected, says Colindres. But it’s a problem for coming years as well, as the sick, spindly plants don’t recover quickly.

And while growers are already planting more fungus-resistant varieties to try to reduce their losses, Colindres says the flavour of the beans isn’t as good from those strains. The world’s coffee drinkers are a notoriously finicky lot when it comes to the taste of their favourite brew, so that’s worrying producers as well.

What can be done? COAPROCL has just started into a new project with my organization, the Comision de Accion Social Menonita, to improve soil quality at organic fincas and increase plant health. Healthy plants are better able to resist la roya. Other projects  are striving to increase the amount and quality of ground water in the region through better watershed management.

Some growers are planting resistant strains and hoping that flavour concerns will take care of themselves.  Coffee plants produce in their third year and are ideally replaced every eight or so years for maximum productivity (although that's often not the case among Honduras's small producers), so many growers are accustomed to adding new plants every season anyway.

 I walked the Sesemil finca of Alfredo Morales, president of the co-operative, and noted a few “survivor” plants thriving amid their defoliated brethren, despite being from the same vulnerable strain. No doubt scientists are studying such examples of natural resistance as well.

Coffee beans drying at the coffee cooperative
in Sesemil, Copan

Natural fungicides exist for organic producers, but Colindres notes that plants are already showing resistance. Growers often have to resort to three applications of three different fungicides now – an added cost for a marginal producer.

In the short term, the next couple of months are still a happy time for Hondurans. Some two million men, women and children participate in the annual coffee harvest, counting on it to provide money for all the things they aren’t able to afford at any other time of year. 
This is a time of buying new clothes for the kids; finishing off the community water tank; paying off the loans and store credits that got the family through the last half of the year; adding another room on the house.

But in the longer term, Honduras is up against a global change in weather that is expected to wreak havoc within as little as five years with many of the crops grown in the country, including essential food crops such as beans and corn. The emergence of a devastating coffee fungus is not just a stroke of bad luck for a country that has certainly known no shortage of it, but a mere sample of what’s to come if the country can’t adapt to a rapidly changing environment.

Dryer, hotter weather is not just the problem of the moment. It’s a permanent change that puts the country at grave risk of slipping even further in world rankings for malnutrition, poverty, maternal/child health and more.  Efforts to help Honduran producers adapt, mitigate and diversify can’t come soon enough. 

Reflections on a life-changing year

This time last year, I was in one of the most stressful periods of my life as we stripped away all that was familiar and beloved to prepare for our move to Honduras.
I was stepping into a new job in a strange land where I'd have to work in a language I barely knew, leaving behind friends, family and the security of a comfortable and fulfilling 30-year career. I was unsettled by the constant reports of violence and murder coming out of Honduras, and wondering just what my spouse and I had gotten ourselves into with our decision to volunteer for Cuso International.
But it felt like the right thing to do even so. And with a challenging, exhilarating year now under our belts, I'm happy to report that it was.
We had no idea what  to expect when we boarded the plane for San Pedro Sula on a cold, damp January day. More than 50 years of middle-class accumulation had been reduced to a small storage locker of largely worthless personal possessions and 40 kilos of baggage we were taking with us. Except for short bursts of travel, I'd never been farther than a few hours away from my family.
And you can't help but be a little edgy when everyone keeps reminding you you're headed for the murder capital of the world. A newcomer reading the relentlessly grim news coming out of Honduras is bound to feel at least a little apprehensive about spending time here, and the scary in-country briefing we got upon our arrival in Tegucigalpa certainly didn't help with that.
But the reality has turned out to be so very different. Virtually every Honduran I've met this past year has wanted only that I like their country. People are friendly and helpful, and despairing over the daily deluge of bad-news media stories that are scaring travellers and aid missions away. Sometimes I'll be walking through an area that I walked ever so tentatively in those first few weeks in Honduras and flash back to how nervous I felt back then, and how sharply that contrasts with the way I feel now on those same streets.
My first couple of months on the job were admittedly really difficult, what with understanding so little of what my workmates were saying. I fear my inadequate Spanish skills left me devoid of any outward signs of personality or humour. My head ached at the end of every day from the effort of trying to communicate.
But little by little I learned. At the six-month mark, something kicked in and I began to understand much more of what I heard. The writing and reading came along even quicker. A year on, I can hold my own in any conversation without having to rehearse every sentence in my head before daring to open my mouth, and now use Google Translate solely to confirm what I've already written rather than as a crutch to get me through another baffling day.
My co-workers gradually started inviting me out into the field with them, where at least I could take photos and see for myself the work of the organization. I tried to be helpful in any way I could. I had to let go of the "Canadian way" and adjust to a laid-back work culture that feels none of that sense of urgency to complete tasks on time or on plan.
It was hard to be reduced to a virtual novice on the work front after many comfortable years of recognition back home, but it has also been exciting to be proving myself all over again. My role here is to help my co-workers get better at telling the stories of the great work they do, and I'm finally starting to think that just might be possible.
Perhaps the best part - as strange as this might sound -  has been to experience a country with problems that are not only much more profound than anything my home country faces, but far more complex. To see such problems up close has not only given me a new appreciation for good governance - something that is almost completely absent in Honduras - but challenged me as never before to take more personal responsibility for affecting change. More and more I see what can be accomplished simply by one person doing what they can.
I've learned that while Skype and Facebook are not substitutes for time spent with family and friends, they're pretty good ways to stay in touch. I've learned that you can pack a lot into a short visit home, and hope to one day be as good as my well-travelled cousin at finding cheap flights and arranging meet-you-in-Las-Vegas kinds of holidays for quick catch-ups.
I have another year here to build on what I've learned so far. I'll need it, and am grateful that we had the good fortune of being accepted for two-year positions. It feels like the adventure is just getting started.

The end is in sight - at least for 2012

Parque Central decked out for Christmas and the
end of the Mayan calendar

Feliz Navidad a todos as the festive season closes in. And if the world must end, may it be as sunny and as pleasant as it is right now in Copan.
We'll be out at the Copan Ruinas archaeological site tomorrow night with the rest of the crowds just in case there's something to this end-of-the-world business. Might as well have ringside seats.
But I'm counting on the experts and the Mayan people to be right about the whole thing being a trumped-up myth. We're leaving on Saturday for two weeks of enjoying the Caribbean beaches of Honduras, so I'd hate to think the world might end before we fit that in.
I don't expect to be blogging much in the next while, what with all the travelling, snorkelling, lying around in the sun with a good book and other forms of merriment. My son and his family are here visiting until mid-January and  I want to free up as much time as possible to help them enjoy Honduras.
 But thanks for  reading my blog this past year and for sending comments my way once in a while - always great to hear from you. The Honduran adventure continues in 2013 and I'll back to documenting it sometime around the second week of January (barring something so fascinating happening that I just can't help but comment).
My plan is to see even more of the country in the coming year, as I'll be visiting the six other regions where my organization works.  Such an opportunity to get even further off the beaten path in this lovely, interesting country.  

Oh, the weather outside's not frightful (and by the pool's delightful)

Copan Christmas elves

I was sitting by the pool today, sipping a cerveza and thinking about what a very different Christmas I’ll be having this year.

This is my first Christmas ever outside of Canada.  I’m not the type to make too big a deal out of Christmas, but I did have a few rituals around the season. The absence of those rituals this year is making me newly aware of the ones I’m missing and the ones I never did take much of a shine to.

Cold weather, for instance. Maybe I dreamed of a white Christmas a few times as a kid, but that desire pretty much went away once I started to drive a car and work for a living.

Yes, it’s a little harder to summon Christmas feelings while lying poolside, despite the colourful light display at one of the local drinking holes I walked past on the way home and the inflatable snowman on a neighbour’s roof.  But I will be perfectly happy Christmas morning to throw the doors open and breathe in warm, tropical air.

I also don’t miss Christmas carols in all the stores. Come to think of it, I don’t miss the stores, either.  

The variety stores in Copan do carry a few Christmas supplies: Lights; garlands; Christmas wrap; candles. There are poinsettias for Christmas – they grow here – and maybe a turkey in the yard whose end is coming soon. But there’s no crazy mall scene like I’ve been used to all those years, or hordes of people jammed into over-stocked stores with a look of panic in their eyes.

Santa did come to the town square to throw around a few candies. But while he’s known around these parts, my co-workers tell me that few Honduran kids ever get up Christmas morning expecting to find gifts from Santa. I won’t shed any tears for Santa’s absence, because it’s a strange myth when you get to reflecting on it.

However, I’m definitely missing the many seasonal rituals involving family. I would have made shortbread and homemade Bailey’s with at least one of my daughters by now, and would have dug out the giant bag of tree decorations that always triggers much reminiscing about when and how each ornament from the ragtag collection came to be special and loved.

My son and his family will be here with us over Christmas, so at least we’ll have a few family members around.  But that still leaves four children, three grandchildren, two brothers and two sets of parents who we won’t be spending Christmas with.  I’m really going to miss those guys.

Posadas are held nightly Dec. 1-24

 I’ll miss the scraggly potted pine tree that I dragged indoors to serve as our Christmas tree for the last six years. I’ll miss the various Christmas gatherings that are a staple of this time of year – the mulled wine, the fancy snacks, the excuse to put on nicer clothes. I’ll miss the sheer abundance and variety of food and booze that punctuates the season, although I won’t miss the two months of new-year dieting required to shake off the Christmas bulge.

Copan has its own Christmas traditions to connect to, of course. Posada is a particularly lovely one. People walk through the streets throughout December singing and carrying candles, each night visiting a different posada – somebody’s home designated as that evening’s resting place – where they’re welcomed inside. Anyone can just join the group and follow along.

There’s something happening every night in the square in the 10 days leading up to Christmas, from theatre to celebrations related to the end of the Mayan calendar Dec. 21. There are more tourists in town, more street vendors selling grilled meats, more park vendors selling bright-red Delicious apples imported for the season.  

There’s a nativity scene at the big Catholic church that we want to see. And there are fireworks, endless fireworks, which apparently will just intensify in the days to come. I’m not so enamored of that tradition, but I know my grandsons are going to love it.

Best of the season to you and yours, however you define your Christmas. I will think of you when I’m lying at the beach, and you can think of me when your family gathers around the turkey.  There’s something to be said for both of those.