Coffee recovery plan's got just one little catch...

Coffee beans drying on a cement patio in Copan

Just when the smallest of bright lights appeared on the horizon for Honduras's coffee growers, a new problem has emerged - one that the government will understandably have little sympathy for.
Losses have been devastating this year for the country's small coffee producers, whose crops have been hit hard by a coffee fungus that reduced this year's yields by as much as 70 per cent in some regions. Those losses are expected to worsen in the coming two years, as the affected coffee plants have had to be cut back hard or even pulled out entirely and won't be producing at normal levels again until the harvest of 2016-17.
While slow to respond, the Honduras government is now offering 10-year loans at 10 per cent interest for producers who need to replant. Growers will be eligible for up to $1,500 in loans for each manzana (about 1.8 acres) they replant up to a maximum of five, and there's an additional $1,000 per manzana  for improvements elsewhere in their fincas to make plants more resistant to the fungus known as la roya.
In recognition of the three-year lag before plantations will be producing at normal levels again, the producers won't have to start paying money back until after 2016. The amount per manzana  isn't enough - growers say it actually costs $4,500 to replant that much coffee - but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing, which is what has been on offer up until now.
But......ah, isn't there always a "but" in Honduras? But to qualify for those loans, producers have to be able to show receipts of coffee sales from the last three harvests. And it sounds like there are very few who will be able to do that.
There's a practice in Honduras among coffee buyers of offering a higher price if the grower will forego a receipt. It's a way for the buyers to avoid paying tax.
Many growers are happy to oblige for a little more money in their pockets. Tax evasion is practically a national pastime in Honduras, and margins are tight enough on coffee sales - and on income in general for the country's 85,000 or so small producers - that even a little extra cash is a temptation that's hard to resist. Nor do you see much evidence of tax dollars at work down here, which no doubt fuels people's suspicions that  paying taxes accomplishes little beyond helping some well-paid minister get an even bigger salary.
I wouldn't count on the government to be won over by any of that, however. The country needs Honduran coffee producers to get back on their feet, but it's a reach to expect government to waive a key loan requirement because a producer conspired to cheat the country out of tax revenue for his or her own gain and thus has no receipts.
And even if government were moved to let a little thing like that go, how exactly do you prove that a grower has equity for the purposes of a loan if there's no formal evidence of sales? Foreign governments that wanted to help would face the same problem. Nobody gives out loans based on phantom sales.
When you see the tiny amounts of money that people get by on in Honduras, you can totally understand why someone might balk at losing any of it to taxes. Subsistence farmers in our region count themselves lucky if they earn the equivalent of $100 a month.
Coffee producers do a little better. But even so, most have no more than one or two manzanas and rely on their coffee crops to pay for every household expense, from books and tuition fees for their school-age children to medical costs, equipment repair, animal care and improvements to their fincas.
But honestly, people. Somebody has to get a little more serious about this country before it careens full speed ahead into failed-state status. How can it be that one of the most important industries in the country exists in such haphazard fashion?
There's something to be said for business practices in countries that go a little looser on the regulatory framework than we're used to up in Canada. Sometimes commerce just needs to be free. But then a crisis like this comes along and you see why we went to all that bother. 

Risking everything for a better life

Illegal immigrants aboard La Bestia, a notorious Mexican cargo train

Illegal immigration to the United States is both bane and blessing for Honduras.

A young acquaintance of my boss is currently experiencing the bane side of things, locked up in a prison in Tyler, Texas after she got caught last month trying to enter the U.S. illegally. Prison officials are telling her she'll be held in jail for two or three months as punishment, then shipped back to Honduras along with the 2,500 or so other illegals from the country who are deported from the States every month. 

The blessing is, of course, the money. An estimated 600,000 Hondurans live and work illegally in the U.S., and the money they send home to their impoverished families accounts for a staggering 20 per cent of the country's GDP.

What would Honduras do without the thousands of brave souls willing to risk everything in an attempt for a better life? Having to leave family and friends behind while dodging countless dangers is hardly the solution that anyone would want for a country, but Honduras would have significantly more problems than it already has were it not for those tough citizens who put their lives on the line for a better life for their loved ones. 

The stories are legion here about the journey, what with so many people having given it a try (and often more than once). The research has found that it's rarely the poorest of the poor who make the trip, seeing as that group can't afford even the most basic amenities to ease the hardships that await. The ones who tend to make it are those who can come up with $5,000 for an experienced coyote - one who knows the safest routes, the best hotels for hiding from the authorities, and the size of the bribe that might be required to get a person out of a tight spot. 

The more money a person has, the easier the trip. One woman made the entire journey in a mere six days, travelling the final leg first with a Mexican police escort and then with U.S. police. Everybody's got their price, apparently.

Others tell of horrendous weeks or even months trying to get to the U.S. Some run out of food and water. Others get attacked by gangs in Mexico who prey on the travellers. Some endure the Mexican cargo train they call La Bestia, infamous for its many dangers and its tendency to leave travellers wounded and maimed from a perilous ride on the roof. One young fellow managed to survive the challenging swim through a small hole in the underwater fence that divides the Mexican and U.S. shores of the Rio Grande, only to discover on the other side that his best friend who'd been right behind him had drowned.

And far too many people simply vanish, leaving their families to wonder forever more. The woman who owns a little restaurant in our neighbourhood hasn't heard from her son since he left for the U.S. six years ago. The family of the young woman who recently turned up in a Texas prison initially thought she'd died as well, as the group she was with had left her behind after she was unable to keep up. 

My Chinese grandfather came to Canada more than a century ago pretending to be somebody's adopted son, a favourite strategy at the time for Chinese immigrants who never would have gotten into the country without that little lie. Perhaps that explains why I've always thought highly of illegal immigrants. 

Catch the right-wing political news on the subject and you'd think they were talking about lazy cheaters who just want an easy ride. The truth is that only the most motivated, the most prepared, the most resourceful people would even consider trying to enter a country like the U.S. illegally.

To want a better life for your family - how can you fault a person for that? Illegal immigrants make tremendous personal sacrifices. They do jobs that others won't do. They fuel the economy of developed countries, even while those same countries work very, very hard to make life miserable for them. 

We talk a good game about "feeling" for people trapped in poor countries, but clearly like it best when they stay home and settle for our little aid handouts. We really ought to be celebrating the courage, resilience and adaptability of those who strike out on an uncertain, life-threatening journey with no idea whether it's going to turn out to be the best thing they've ever done for their family or a tragic and costly mistake.

Let them come. They make this world a better place.

Back in the land o' plenty

We've been back in B.C. for just over a week now, jamming in a quick visit with everyone before we fly back to Honduras on Monday. A few things that have struck me about my home province as I return with fresh eyes:

Clean, green and tidy. Wow, British Columbians keep the place neat. No garbage anywhere and a whole lot of green space. Even people's lawns provide green space, seeing as nobody has 10-feet-high fences blocking the view into their pretty gardens.

Too many controlled intersections. It's been a while since I've been behind the wheel of a car, but I've jumped straight back into frustrated-driver mode with all the damn stoplights. Guess I've gotten used to that easy cruisin' style in Honduras - slow over the speed bumps and the incredibly wrecked roads, sure, but not nearly so much stop-and-start.

So much choice. I feel like a tourist walking through the gigantic grocery stores, ogling hemp hearts, 15 kinds of sprouts and mountains of the world's produce like I'm walking through the streets of Europe. It was all so normal to me not so long ago, but it feels a bit excessive to me now.

Cold. But fresh. It hasn't been easy to go from the hottest time of year in Copan to a brisk spring in coastal B.C. But the air is lovely, and I am seeing the beautiful Pacific Ocean with new eyes.

Too much flavour. OK, I've been craving the diverse food scene of Canada, but I can see all too clearly now why I had a few pounds to lose back when we were living here. The cheeses! The baked goods! The smoked fish! Plus I've whined on Facebook several times about the lack of good chocolate in Honduras, which has prompted many of my female friends to stock me up with high-end chocolate. It's all quite a treat, but my body will be glad to get back to simpler fare.

Smooth roads. Yes, you do stop and start a lot more in this land, but I haven't had my teeth snapped together by a pothole or whacked my head into the dashboard in several days now. And it's nice to have a seat to myself in every vehicle I go in, Canadians not being in the habit of jamming in as many people as can possibly fit.

Still and all, great to be back, but also great to be thinking about the return to our new "home" next week. Now if only I could get all my family to move to Honduras.

Hard road to travel

It's difficult to know where to start in a country with a lot of problems. Give the kids a better education? Prepare subsistence farmers for tough days to come? Do something about all the murders? Advocate for better wages? Look for economic opportunities to address chronic unemployment?

Nor is it easy to priorize when a country has strong distinctions between its classes, with all its problems at the bottom of the economic scale and all the wealthy, influential people at the top.

Honduras is made up of a thin crust of rich, powerful people, a small and struggling middle class, millions of people living in poverty, and an emerging class of “nouveau riche” who work in the cocaine import/export business. Tough to find consensus among groups as disparate as that.

But if I could be so bold as to suggest a starting point – a start-small kind of project that will benefit every Honduran across all social classes – how about this: Fix the damn roads.

I just spent five brutal hours today bouncing home from La Campa, Lempira, a 128-kilometre trip that requires a traveller to pass along three of what have to be among the worst sections of paved road in the country: Gracias, Lempira, to Santa Rosa de Copan; Santa Rosa to La Entrada; and La Entrada to Copan Ruinas. I'm also barely a month home from our epic bus journey to the Moskitia, which took me to new depths of understanding as to what it means to travel a “bad road” in Honduras.

So yes, the country's ridiculous roads are weighing on my mind right now. But really, just think about it for a minute: Couldn't you take a big step toward improving almost every problem in Honduras just by giving people better roads?

Take poverty, for instance. Bad roads aren't the cause of poverty, but they surely add to it.

Honduras has probably been the site of thousands of noble economic-development projects over the years in impoverished, out-of-the-way villages, but few appear to have taken into account that unless people can get their goods to market, nothing will change.

I'm always running into charming little micro empresas in the middle of nowhere that have been started by some well-intentioned foreign entity wanting to give villagers a new, marketable skill that would lift the town out of poverty. The villages always seem to be located many hours away from the nearest commercial centre of any size, up dirt “roads” so terrible that only an earnest NGO type or a missionary would ever travel on them willingly.

Yet there they are, all these tiny businesses at the end of the road, producing pretty pottery or plant-based paper products with not a chance of getting any of it to market. I visited one yesterday up in the mountains above La Campa.

For the last seven years, the five women who run the micro empresa have been boiling up leaves of local plants to make really great-looking paper, cards and fancy little gift boxes. But other than a small shipment of goods that goes to market in Gracias a couple of times a year, the only sales the group has are when people like me stumble upon them on the way to somewhere else and drop $5 for a few things.

I've met other groups of women producing everything from bread, woven goods, jewelry from recycled materials, ceramics or honey who all face the same problem. Their operations are a long way from a commercial centre, they're too poor to have their own vehicles, and the roads are much too rough for buses to set up a service. Others are helped to set up vegetable gardens, small coffee plantations and tilapia ponds as a means of lifting them out of poverty. But they, too, can't get around the transportation problems.

As for the rich and powerful – well, they have to want better roads, too. Roads that are almost universally rutted, pot-holed, nausea-inducing and frequently accessible only by 4x4 add significantly to the risk of an accident and the time it takes to get anywhere. Unless you're wealthy enough to own a helicopter, rich and poor alike spend an inordinate amount of time in Honduras jouncing along truly horrible roads. Whatever business they're in, the condition of the roads likely affects their bottom line as well.

Then there's the middle-class – the ones making maybe $10,000 a year, which is just about enough to be able to start dreaming about the possibilities of a better future for your kids. Some live hours away from their families because there's no work nearby, and can't possibly consider a commute on abysmal roads that take three or four times as long to drive as you'd expect based solely on the distance.

They know that a decent education is the best hope their children have. But it can be a tremendous struggle just to work out the transportation issues around getting them to school. It's generally pretty easy to find nearby schools up to Grade 6, but colegios are scarce and often many hard miles away from the family home. Decent roads and a daily bus service could have a dramatic impact on education levels in the country.

Those in the country's bustling cocaine import/export business have to want better roads, too. Planes and boats bring the cocaine from Colombia into the country, but much of it travels on roads after that as it moves toward markets in the U.S. and Canada.

Having been to the Moskitia and travelled the only road out of there – which gives “beach-front drive” new meaning – I'm sure transport is quite an issue for those guys as well. I'm not suggesting that better roads for narco-traficantes should be a goal, just noting that even they should be on-side with priorizing road repair.

Come on, people. Just do it. There's a whole lot more to tackle after that, but the wheels of progress can't possibly get a grip on roads as bad as these.

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?