Hope you'll help us win the Cuso contest

If you're on Facebook, my spouse and I hope you'll take a moment to visit this link and help us win the Cuso International video contest! We've got one week to get as many "likes" as we can for our video and for the Cuso page.

So here's the rules: Click on the link to the Cuso International page and check out our video, which at the moment is the only entry on the page. If you enjoy the little song and photo show we've put together, we need you to "like" the Cuso page overall and then also click the "like" under our video. All the photos have been taken by Paul and I through our work this past year here in Honduras with the Comision de Accion Social Menonita and the Organismo Cristiano de Desarrollo Integral de Honduras.

 Fame and fortune will follow - or at least, the possibility of an iTunes music card and perhaps a future for Paul and I performing in a small, rundown bar somewhere. Thanks for your support!

And just in case you'd like to sing along with the video, here are the words to the song. The tune is courtesy of John Denver, "Leaving on a Jet Plane."

All our bags are packed, we're standing here

About to be a volunteer

In a country Peace Corps left just weeks ago

Will we get gunned down? Or take up coke?

Will our workmates think we're quite the joke?

With our grade-school Spanish messing up the show?

But we're flexible Cuso stock

We'll survive this culture shock

If capacity needs building, count us in

We're working in a new land

Don't know when we'll be back again

Our world won't be the same

We've met campesinos by the score,

We've learned most folks here are really poor

We know more about la roya than we should

We've been bounced down dirt roads, left to wait

Learned that 6 o'clock is more like 8

And that sunshine in December sure feels good

We're flexible Cuso stock

We'll survive the culture shock

If capacity needs building, we're your team

The power failures don't get us down

We've landed in a real nice town

And the guns aren't aimed at us, just worn with jeans

Are we changing culture? It's hard to tell

Communications is a real tough sell

In a country that has faith and not much more

But they love the photos, think the Web site's cool

The Facebook friends and the PowerPoints too

But will they keep it up when we walk out the door?

We're flexible Cuso stock

We've survived this culture shock

We're thriving in a most appealing way

Thank you for this chance to shine

In a land that has no sense of time

O Cuso...can we stay?

Excellent primer on sex work as the big court date approaches

A great read from Canadian advocate and activist Joyce Arthur, who interviewed sex workers about what they think will happen if the Supreme Court of Canada decides to decriminalize the adult, consensual sex industry when the matter goes to court June 12.
 I have a good feeling that this just might be the case that gets our country past the poorly considered laws that cause so much harm to sex workers. Whatever your opinion of sex work, surely nobody wants laws that harm more than help the tens of thousands of Canadians who work in the industry. Yet that`s exactly what happens as a result of our outdated, illogical and hypocritical laws that force workers into the shadows so that the rest of us can pretend that sex work doesn`t exist.
Joyce`s piece has links to all the standard arguments for and against decriminalization, plus links to all kinds of reports on the subject. If you`re not familiar with this issue, hope you`ll take the time to explore the stories behind the story.

On the road....again??

Food vendors selling to a second-class bus in La Ceiba

I've been on a heck of a lot of buses lately. With a new commitment to visit the more distant regions of my organization this year, I'm fast becoming an expert on the good, the bad and the ugly of Honduran bus travel. So here's a little primer that might serve you well should you ever be down this way, or in any of the other developing countries that I've been to with remarkably similar transportation options.

First-class bus: If money's no object and you can fit your travel to the bus company's schedule, this is certainly the most comfortable way to go. In Honduras, the main first-class service is run by Hedman Alas. You get clean, comfy seats, air conditioning, non-stop travel, movies, and even a little snack. Your bags are tagged and stored in orderly fashion below, and they even do security checks before you get on so that nobody gets on with a gun (in theory, anyway). But the tickets are at least twice as expensive as other forms of travel, and trips are only at set times to specific destinations. For a lot of the travel I'm doing for my work, Hedman Alas isn't an option because the buses go only to the big tourist destinations, with no stops in between.

Second-class bus: You still get fairly comfy seats, but the air conditioning is more likely to be via an open window and there will probably be people standing in the aisles for at least part of the trip, as these buses do pickups at all towns along their route. This is called "direct service," but don't confuse that with "non-stop." No snacks, but vendors get on the bus at every stop and offer you everything from fried chicken to bags of cut-up fruit, pop, baked goods, watches and deodorant. Depending on the bus line and whether there's a designated terminal for that company in the town you're in, you may have to walk up to the nearest main road and flag the bus down as it passes. Pee breaks aren't guaranteed, so think about that before guzzling down a big bottle of water.

Third-class bus: Very cheap - maybe a third of the cost of the first-class buses. But you get what you pay for, so be prepared for constant stops, much longer travel times, and buses crammed with as many passengers as the driver can pack in. A lot of these buses are retired school buses from the U.S., so for maximum comfort try to check the functionality of your window, the amount of leg room (it varies), and the springs in your seat before sitting down. Your bags will likely be carried on top of the bus, and may or may not be tarped in the event of rain. Still, I'm very fond of these kinds of buses. They take forever to get where they're going, but the trip is never dull. There are also enough of them that you'll have a lot of flexibility around travel times, presuming you can find someone who can give you an honest answer as to where and when they leave.

Shuttles: From outward appearances, these vans look like palatable options for doing long trips, as the price is right and the vans are generally well-maintained and air-conditioned. Many a Copan Ruinas tourist jumps into a $20 shuttle for what is ostensibly a seven-hour trip to El Salvador or Guatemala City. But be warned that just because you have your own seat when you first board does NOT mean that two more people won't be squeezed into the same row a little later in the trip. The leg room is brutal for anyone over 5'6". The air conditioning is usually insufficient for the size of the vehicle, but the windows are jammed shut so you have no option. The trips always take longer than what you've been told, and the motion of the vehicles on Honduras's bad roads will induce car sickness even in the most durable traveller. I steer clear of shuttles.

Rapiditos: If I never had to ride in a rapidito again, I would be a happy person. Unfortunately, there's often no choice. These are vans, too, but generally in a state of serious disrepair and with far too many seats jammed into a tattered, filthy interior space. I use the term "seat" loosely, because mostly you'll just be perched in a space that's way too small for your butt, often with strangers virtually sitting on your lap and others looming over you in a half-stooped position as they struggle to balance themselves in a standing position as the van clunks along, usually making worrying noises down below that will have you thinking a great deal about what would happen if, say, the axle broke or the rear tires fell off. In theory, rapiditos are supposed to carry no more than 16-18 travellers, but I've frequently been in vans with 23 people. Horrible, horrible way to travel, even for short distances.

The kind of vehicle you'll be in should you need road
transportation into the Moskita

Private vehicle: Another option that sounds better than it usually is. Perhaps you're picturing a ride in a private vehicle as being more or less like it would be in Canada or the U.S., where a five-passenger car has five passengers, five working seatbelts, and a roomy trunk for all the luggage. Ah, but in Honduras, anyone lucky enough to have their own vehicle is going to pack that thing with as many people and as much stuff as possible in order to justify the gas costs of any major trip. I've had my boss come pick me up for a five-hour trip only to discover that there are eight passengers for five seats, which means three people have to ride in the back of the truck. Even if it's not you who gets stuck back there, you can't help but feel guilty. My spouse and I recently paid $25 apiece - a small fortune - for a four-hour ride in a private vehicle into the Moskitia, and in both directions one of us was left to jounce along the terrible dirt roads in the back of the truck along with six or seven other travellers and a vast array of cargo, including several propane tanks. And that was almost preferable to being stuffed into the unbearably claustrophobic interior of the truck.

So there you have it - travel Honduras-style. I found the road travel here quite unbearable initially, but I've gotten used to it over this past year. Now I catch glimpses of myself reflected in a bus window and see that same stoic, flat look that I've come to think of as the trademark of a Honduran traveller. It's that or stay home. 

An Easter to remember

This is a nice time of year in Copan Ruinas. Semana Santa - the week leading into Easter - is a crazy-big holiday in Honduras, with hundreds of thousands of local travellers on the move. But Copan gets just enough of that scene to make the town feel energized without crossing into insanity.

Tonight, the main street will be full of volunteers building the two-block-long alfombras made from coloured sawdust. Using giant stencils to create beautiful sawdust art in a rainbow of colours, the volunteers will work into the wee hours tonight making a street mural that celebrates Jesus and tells the story of these very special holy days for Christians. 

All day tomorrow, people will make their way carefully past the stretch of sawdust paintings, and perhaps climb a big ladder at one end of the street that lets you take in all of that creativity at once. In cities like Comayagua, where they're marking 50 years of alfombras, the art works just keep getting more intricate and amazing.

The beautiful sight isn't meant to last, which is perhaps what makes the alfombras seem so special. Mere hours after their creation, they are destroyed underfoot as a Catholic procession walks down them on their way to the main church. Last year, reverent locals followed behind the procession, gathering up small containers of the coloured sawdust as a keepsake of the moment. 

The weather has been cooler than usual this week, which I'm sure will be a relief to those who participate in the reenactment of the Stations of the Cross. It's quite a trek for the crowd, which numbered in the thousands last year. 

The main Catholic church is in the little valley where the town centre is, but the procession makes its way up and down some of the town's steep little hills leading out of the centre. Some people in the procession are carrying almost life-size statues of Jesus and Mary the whole time so they can reenact the last time Mary kissed her son before his death. Last year, the heat was relentless on the poor sods sweating under their

heavy cargo. 

Today, the street where jewellery sellers set up their stalls was strewn with pine needles, a fragrant carpet that  is a tradition here anytime someone throws a celebration. Birthday parties, special days, religious holidays - all are a reason to break out the pine needles.

 The jewellry street in Copan tends to look a little half-baked for much of the year, but the pine needles and the tents that some of the vendors put up this week have it looking like a happening place. I saw all kinds of new faces making their way down the street today, and the vendors looked happy to be busy. 

A lot of stores closed today and will stay that way through Sunday. My office takes the whole week off, as do many organizations and government bodies. Everybody's on the move, travelling here and there to spend the holiday with their families. More than 150,000 people a day will pass through San Pedro Sula's big bus terminal this week. 

So we have made it a point to stay put these past two Semana Santas. We travel in place, watching this little town change and be changed by the influx of Honduran tourists who are on the move at this time of year. The tilapia seller was set up on the sidewalk yesterday with her giant garbage cans full of gasping fish for sale, and I expect the budgie seller (five lempiras apiece) and the coloured-chick vendors will be showing up soon. There's probably three or four times as many food vendors on the streets as is the norm, and the entire downtown smells rather lusciously of  meat skewers grilling over charcoal.

Whatever your religious beliefs, may this weekend bring you peace and pleasant times with friends and family. At this time of year in a predominantly Catholic country, you feel how special the week is regardless of whether you believe.

Lord, give me the grace to celebrate this occasion. Palm Sunday did not last - what does? But while we dance together, it is a foretaste of heaven. - Philippines 2:6-11.

So much farmland, so little food

Photo: Rainforest Rescue 

I came home from our recent trip to the Moskitia feeling unsettled by the vast, eerie mono-cultures of African palm trees that dominate the coastal landscape of Honduras as you move east toward the Nicaraguan border. A Google search on the phenomenon provided me with this 2013 quote about the plantations from a web site that tracks Central American business trends:

“Investments of $35 million allowed an increase in planted areas of 17,000 hectares, which are added to the 135,000 already cultivated with oil palm," notes the Business to Business site. "Crude palm oil has been increasing steadily, influenced by an increase in prices in response to increased global demand for the oil from the bio-diesel industry.”

We're all familiar by now with the global dream to create a sustainable plant-based fuel that might end our dependency on dwindling fossil fuels. Honduras even has a law around bio-fuel production, which allows the country's big palm-oil producers to enjoy tax holidays, special treatment and all kinds of international financial support to encourage them in their work.

Ah, but palm oil is more like snake oil when you dig into just how much of the crop in Honduras is actually being used for bio-fuel. Efforts to use Honduras's massive palm plantations for that purpose have stalled out. Companies simply make a lot more money selling palm oil for use in snack foods and cosmetics than they do producing bio-fuel.

Five of Honduras's 11 palm oil-processing plants have the ability to convert the oil into bio-fuel, and could be producing 66,100 gallons of it every day.

“However, the plants are currently not producing bio-fuel,” notes the United States Department of Agriculture in a 2012 report. “The cost of bio-fuel production in Honduras is affected by a higher international price obtained with the sale of African palm oil. The main obstacle for the industry is deciding what is more profitable: to sell the oil for food and other types of processing, or to make bio-fuel``

Not that there's anything wrong with companies opting to sell their goods into whatever market looks the most promising. That's what companies do.

But African palm plantations are now spread out over almost 152,000 hectares of prime growing land along the Caribbean coast of Honduras, with plans to increase that to 200,000. It's time to get honest about what those palm trees are being used for. “Bio-fuel” has the ring of something that's saving the planet, but the global growth in African palm oil is in fact just more evidence of the developed world's insatiable appetite for processed food.

Palm oil is an ingredient in a long, long list of foods and cosmetics ranging from power bars and instant noodles to mouth wash, soap and anti-ageing cream. I'll leave it to others to posit on the health hazards of palm-oil consumption, which is high in saturated fats. What bothered me as we drove through a massive plantation east of Tocoa was just seeing all those palms stretching out as far as the eye could see, producing non-essential ingredient for the developed world without adding so much as a bean to poor Hondurans' plates.

Well, that's an exaggeration – a hectare of African palms creates one direct job and two indirect ones, says the USDA. The country needs those jobs, even if they don't pay well. (Pickers account for the bulk of the 152,000 direct jobs and earn about $7 a day during harvest.)

But even so, we're still talking about good land in a country where the malnutrition rate is above 50 per cent in some regions - land being put to use to produce something unnecessary for overfed people in the lands of plenty. There's just something wrong about that.

The only way to get from Tocoa into the Moskitia by land is to stuff yourself into a private truck crammed with people and goods, fork over $25, and tough it out for four or five long, crazy hours. It was during one such trip earlier this month that our driver took a detour through a big palm plantation, giving me my first glimpse from within of these silent, unnatural forests. (The bloody Bajo Aguan land conflict is also taking place on these lands.)

The land was once used to grow bananas. But the money is in palm oil now. Honduras produces almost 400,000 metric tonnes of it a year. And unlike the country's coffee industry, which remains largely in the hands of small producers, palm oil belongs to the big guys – the ones with plenty of money for acquiring huge tracts of land.

You'd think that any forest would be visually appealing, because green is green. But somehow, the big palm plantations feel devoid of life. I was puzzled by the number of dying trees we saw, their big palm fronds a sickly grey and their shrivelled trunks drooping from the top. I later learned that the trees are poisoned by the companies when they get too tall for easy harvest. You could almost feel the sorrow in those woods.

As noted, there's good and bad to all of it. The industry produces jobs, and it could produce significant tax revenue as well for the country if it wasn't getting quite so many breaks. If the oil really was being used for bio-fuel, that would take the discussion to a whole other level.

But it's not. There's no saving of the planet going on in those big plantations. Don’t bother to cue the angel choir for these spooky forests, because the only thing you hear amid the palms is the sound of money being made.