A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

    Spend enough hours on a Honduran long-distance bus and you will end up boarding them with the seasoned eye of a veteran seat-assessor, able to take in the available options at a glance and make the best choice with barely a moment of additional anxiety to the passengers jamming in behind you. Having been up, down and around this country on all manner of public transportation, here are my recommendations for how it's done: 1. Do I have control of the window? Unless you're on a first-class, air-conditioned bus - in which case none of this matters, because you'll have an assigned seat - this is perhaps the most important issue for your comfort. Without control of the window, you forfeit your right to get a little cool air in your face during a hot time of year or stop the passing storm from pouring in on you in more inclement times of year. Plus you're not going to be able to buy snacks and drinks from the vendors who come rushing up whenever the bus stops if yo...

  This morning's paper brought news of a tiny baby found abandoned at the foot of a tree in a village not far from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.  Next to him was a bag full of baby products - a bottle of milk, diapers, talcum powder, a bib - and a note asking whoever found the baby to look after him well. A neighbour saw the news about the foundling and called in to report the young mother who had abandoned the baby, and now she's going to prison.     Oh, come on. In the same paper, there were stories about 14 people who had been fatally shot in Honduras the day before, including two in wheelchairs. Another story listed details of four massacres that had happened since November in which 17 people had been killed.     With the exception of one of the massacres, there are no suspects in any of the murders. And if things go the way they usually seem to go here, there never will be.      Elsewhere in the morning paper, the Ministry ...

    The pool swim with the Angelitos kids this past weekend had a certain poignancy about it. I expect there will be one more and then we'll be gone, back to Canada to start whatever the next adventure will be.     We always knew there would be an end to our time with the orphans. I imagine it kept the relationship at something of an arm's length from the beginning, knowing that there was no future together that we were building toward. A little detachment has proven to be a good thing already, what with six of the kids having vanished from our lives during these two years, whisked off to what we will have to hope are better lives with no hint to us (or them, I suspect) that the next time we came to the hogar , they would be gone.      Still, it's a strange thing to walk away from children after all this time. Just because I say I have guarded my heart doesn't mean I actually have. It's not love that we have between us - really, it would be irres...

We have until March 17 to give the federal government our opinion on laws around sex work, as the 3 major laws affecting adult, consenting sex workers were struck down in December as unconstitutional.  Here are my answers, and I urge you to submit your own responses here , Please don't make the mistake of thinking you don't know enough to respond. Just imagine that it's your sister, your mom, your little brother who is working in the industry, making a free choice as an adult (because nobody's talking about changing any laws that prevent violence, coercion, human trafficking or child exploitation - this consultation is strictly about the sale of sex between consenting adults). What would you want for them if this was their work?  A group of sex workers and supporters have put together some guidelines for responding. I'd be happy to forward them to anyone who's interested. The group would also love to have copies of people's responses. But with or...

      I know that after I've said a sad goodbye to the Comision de Accion Social Menonita and have returned to Canada, I will talk fondly to my friends about having had the amazing opportunity to travel around so much of Honduras through my work in all seven regions of CASM.     But tonight I’m in a down-market hotel room in teeny La Campa, sitting under a hideous fluorescent doughnut light while dining on weird little coconut sticks I packed in my bag knowing that I’d be dead bored by Day 3 with the limited food selection here. There’s absolutely zilch on the 13-inch TV. I’m a very long bus ride away from home and am marking my 14 th day of out-of-town work in the last three and a half weeks.     And I am not feeling the love.     A job that involves travel sounds great until you actually have one. I remember having that same revelation as a newsroom manager in Victoria, when the excitement I felt at my first company trip to Toron...