Advice for the Moskitia: Be careful. Very, very careful

June 12, 2013

Sure, it's pretty here, but not yet ready for tourists

   Day 6 here in the Moskitia, and I’m bored dead. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, as good old Joni once sang, and what I miss the most right now is freedom.

   One of my co-workers describes Palacios as a “beautiful prison.” That sums up the place nicely. The little town is a short boat ride away from Batalla, the Garifuna community where road access ends. But the two villages feel completely different.

   There's a gorgeous lagoon just steps away from the main road through Palacios – which is to say, the dirt path that passes for a road because it's just large enough for the handful of locals who have motorcycles or quads – and all kinds of palm-tree wilderness and rivers to explore behind the town. Were this any other land, I’d be rustling up a kayak to explore the lagoon, or happily walking for hours to look for birds, butterflies, and maybe a monkey if I was lucky.

   But this is Honduras, and the Moskitia is where much of the cocaine from Colombia arrives to begin its journey north. I don’t know if I’d really be taking my life in my hands by going out for a ramble, but everybody who lives here seems to think I would be. I’m going to take their word for it.

   And so I stay put, doing the five-minute walk between the hotel and my organization’s little office twice a day and nothing more. Today I stood on the tiny office lawn and looked longingly out across the lagoon. Tonight I stood on the hotel balcony and did the same. That’s about as adventurous as it gets here.

   There’s much talk about reigniting tourism in the area, which apparently disappeared after the 2009 coup. It could be a beautiful thing for everyone, given that there’s so much nature to enjoy here and so many locals who need jobs.

   But somebody’s going to have to bring the region’s narco-traficantes to the table for a discussion before that could ever happen. It simply isn’t safe to invite tourists into this part of the country right now. In my opinion the security warnings for travel in Honduras are ridiculously overblown for much of the country, but even I think it would be a big mistake to have tourists rambling around at will in the Moskitia these days.

    One recent afternoon, my co-workers and I nervously boarded our little boat after a visit to one of the villages while scary men carrying giant guns unloaded boxes at the same tiny dock. I don't know what was in the boxes, but I could take a reasonable guess. As for police presence, there are 25,500 people living in the massive region that makes up the municipalities of Juan Francisco Bulnes and Brus Laguna, and just five police. 

   It’s not that the narco-traficantes are gunning for tourists, of course. They’ve got way bigger things on their mind. From what I know of them, which is not much, they keep very much to themselves and have no obvious desire to kill a passing stranger.

    But they don’t like surprises. I have a feeling that a bunch of happy gringos stumbling into the wrong place at the wrong time would not end happily. All it would have taken in that situation at the dock would have been one crazy tourist to try to sneak in a photo, and you'd be reading in the papers the next day about the boatload of travellers gunned down in broad daylight. The men who work in the Moskitia have big, big guns, no fear of the police, and are no shrinking violets when it comes to resolving a problem through violence.

   Narco-traficantes have been active in this region for a long time, but the locals say they’ve really come to own the place in the last three or four years.  The dreamers among us might still think the day is coming when we’ll win the “war on drugs” and that will be that for the industry, but I’m of a more pragmatic nature and suspect that cocaine trafficking is not only here to stay, but in fact is creating a new social class in Honduras. All those glitzy, pricey malls in Tegucigalpa can’t just be for the old money in the country.

   That's not to say that tourism development in the Moskitia is out of the question. It just can’t be done without the cooperation of the narco-traficantes. If it’s possible to strike deals between rival Latin American gangs to reduce violence, as has happened in El Salvador, then it’s possible to imagine cartel leaders being invited to share their thoughts on how tourism and their own industry might co-exist in the Moskitia. The handful of hardy tour groups still operating down here would also have a lot of insight on a problem that has to be worrying for them, too. 

   It really is a wondrous region: three strong indigenous cultures; a biosphere reserve that’s on the UNESCO World Heritage list; birds and animals galore; miles and miles of sandy Caribbean beach without a soul in sight. I wouldn’t call it untouched – too much illegal tree-cutting, trafficking in wildlife, and garbage lying around to earn that description – but it certainly is authentic. And such potential.

   But first things first. Truce first, tourism to follow. Until then, be very, very careful about where you point that camera.

Dangerous and underpaid: Working in the Moskitia

   I’m sitting at this moment in a Moskitia hotel frequented almost exclusively by scary, armed men in the cocaine-distribution business, in a town that even the more adventurous guide books tell you to avoid. The bar downstairs is blasting narco-ballads, the deceptively cheery music that relates hair-raising stories of life in the illegal-drug trade.

   The presence of scary, armed men is great fodder for blog posts for travelers who live elsewhere, but it’s fairly unsettling for the 67,000 people who live and work in Gracias a Dios, the watery, wondrous Honduras state that borders Nicaragua. And the cocaine traffickers are by no means the only difficulty here.

  There’s no electricity anywhere in the Moskitia, so keeping the generator running (or accessing medical care, going to the bank, buying clothes or any other creature comfort) means a boat ride of anywhere from 25 minutes to five hours, depending how deep into the region’s many lagoons you happen to be, and an eight-hour round trip on a rough and dangerous road that’s in constant risk of washing out in the heavy rains.

   There’s food, but you’d better like fish, chicken, yucca and coconut. There are amazing birds, but an equally impressive number of mosquitos and other biting bugs, especially in the June-July rainy season. (Damn.)

   In short, the Moskitia is a beautiful, complicated, challenging place, with an air of menace overlying everything now that the narco-traficantes have claimed the region as their own.

   One of the towns where my organization works has recently fallen under the control of a Nicaraguan heavyweight, who apparently has ordered the village to observe a 6 p.m. curfew and surrounded the town with armed men. People learn quickly around these parts not to ask questions about who owns the beautiful new mansion on the lagoon, or the boat with two gigantic outboard motors. Best not to know.

   This is my second time here, and once again I’m feeling a mix of exhilaration at the natural beauty and a sense of constant alertness lest I get on the wrong side of the wrong person, or inadvertently turn my birding binoculars or camera in a direction I shouldn’t be looking.

   And I’m just passing through. My co-workers live and work here, in circumstances that are way less comfortable than anything I’ll experience during my nine-day visit. I’ve got a king-size bed in a roomy if somewhat unnerving hotel; they’ve got a foam mattress on the floor of their tiny office, where four of them live communally for at least three weeks of every month. I don’t mind working through the occasional weekend, but they do it all the time, saving up days off so they’ve got enough time to make the long journey out to visit their families.

   I’ve got considerably more appreciation for Canadian work practices and labour law since coming to Honduras. Low pay, exploitive practices, no job security, armed people who just might shoot you, a constant risk of not getting paid – these are regular experiences for the majority of workers. The situation in the Moskitia does kick things up a notch, mind you.

   The work that my Honduran compañeros are doing in this wild and woolly region would likely come with big pay and great benefits back in my homeland, what with all the risks it entails. One woman working with a government forestry organization here recently had the trauma of a drunk narco-traficante putting a gun to her head, and then the additional trauma of watching the two military guards she travels with kill the guy.

    But despite considerable dangers and deprivations, my co-workers make $1,000 or so a month. They’re also on the hook for the considerable transport costs to get in and out of the Moskitia, which are at least $50 every time. 

   As for benefits, I’m sure it would be like telling a fairy tale if I ever described a typical Canadian benefits package to any Honduran. I remember griping when I was back in my journalism days at the shrinking amount available for massages. Man, that seems petty now. The fellow who runs the swimming pool in Copan Ruinas where Paul and I go for a leisurely day sometimes hasn’t had a day off – not one – in the last two years. He’d like to quit, but is scared he’ll end up with no job at all.

   So the lesson is: Thank your lucky stars that for whatever reason, you’re living and working in a wealthy country where you might feel hard done by from time to time, but you’re not. Hug your boss and your union leader, and think good thoughts about whoever it was who lobbied for employment standards. Reflect on your grandparents and great-grandparents, and all the sacrifices they made to ensure future generations of Canadian workers could feel miffed when their company-funded massages cost more than they’d expected.

    Turn your lights on and off and marvel at how easy it is. Sit in your big, comfy car and feel that smooth asphalt below your tires. Celebrate that the gun culture has never really caught on in Canada.

   And if you’re using cocaine, why not switch to something homegrown and save some lives? You’re making things crazy down here.

Satiric commentary on Honduras news

   Very amusing and pointed commentary here about how Honduras tends to get written about. I particularly like the suggested tags. I think I fall into some of this myself sometimes, although I'm really trying not to.
   The national press here in Honduras doesn't deliver much better than the international media - at least two pages at the back of virtually every print edition of La Prensa is devoted to the previous day's body count, all of it presented with zero context and no follow-up. And man, can somebody teach those people how to ask (and answer) the question, "Why?" in their coverage?

Love hurts

   

http://www.artbywicks.com/poetry%20page%203.htm

Something I hadn't anticipated happening quite so quickly in this new international life was feeling passionate about Honduras. 

   Oh, it sounds like a good thing. Doesn't the world need more people who arrive in a strange land and really connect?

   But what it actually means is that I now feel invested in the future of the country. I'm not just thinking warm thoughts about Hondurans and hoping things work out. I'm worrying about the place.

  Again, that probably sounds OK on the surface. Honduras certainly needs more people to worry about its future. The trouble is, I feel like I'm worrying more than Hondurans are. And THAT is a bad thing.

    When I was working with sex workers in Victoria, I learned through hard experience that this is called "wanting more for someone than they want for themselves." It tended to happen as I got to know some of the clients a little better and became attached. I would see such potential in them, and would end up trying to solve their problems for them or spending too much time coming up with strategies that might improve their situation. 

   And if someone's right there with you, ready for all the things you want them to be ready for - hey, it's pretty great to have somebody on your side. But it's not healthy for either party when one person wants more than the other person is ready for. 

   In the case of Honduras, this state manifests for me as near-unbearable frustration.

   Now when I pass a line of people all selling exactly the same things, I'm no longer reaching for my camera to capture the charming scene. I'm stifling an urge to regale them with marketing ideas that might help them distinguish themselves and their products, or lecture them about the futility of trying to make a decent living  when the only thing you've got for sale is the same thing that everyone else has. 

    I observe my co-workers reporting out on their projects and find myself wanting to shriek, "No! No! We have to do more than just count the number of gardens we planted, the number of people who took a course on holding government accountable! This country needs real change!"  

    I continue to listen with interest and sympathy to people's sad stories about villages without water, without road access, where the forests are being lost and the animals are getting sick - villages where children are doomed to spend their lives on the brink of severe malnutrition and in the same poverty that their parents and grandparents struggle with. But more and more I have to swallow hard to avoid crying out, "Run, you people! Can't you see there's no future here?"

   I'm sure there have been many books written on this phenonmenon, where the gringos show up and set about trying to change everything in ways that conform to their own view of a "good life." From such world views have come truly horrible things: Residential schools; colonization; forced assimilation; broken cultures.

    So until Hondurans are demanding these kinds of change, it's really none of my business. If Hondurans are happy enough living hard, short lives existing on beans, tortillas and shockingly small incomes, who am I to want more for them? If people want to leave it to God to sort things out rather than start a revolution, why should that matter to me? If generations of Honduran children never reach their full potential because they're underfed, under-educated, deprived of opportunity and trapped in tiny, isolated villages, is that my problem?

   But what I'm saying is that once you feel passion for a country, it starts to feel like your problem. It gets harder to contrast life in your country with theirs and just shrug it all off as cultural differences. I look at the children of my co-workers and feel enormous sadness that they are being short-changed in every way, and that their families most likely don't even know it because that has been their life, too. 

   In my time with the sex workers, I learned to have patience. I learned to just shut up and wait, to align myself with the ones who were ready and leave the other ones be.

 But it never got any easier. I got better at hiding my feelings, but I never got past them. Honduras, I'm ready when you are. 

Fun with OECD indicators

Hours of fun to be had with this cool graphic from the Organization for Economic Development. The OECD has put together a comparison of 36 countries based on 11 indicators associated with a better life, and a person could pass a lot of time clicking around the site and watching all the pretty flowers move up and down the scale of liveability.
The indicators used by the OECD include housing, income, jobs, civic engagement, health, security and such - standard fare when talking about a country's liveability, but much easier to grasp in this highly visual presentation as opposed to the long lists of numbers that other reports tend to give you.
Once you get finished with increasing and decreasing the indicators to see what happens to the "flowers," click on individual countries for loads more information, from the rich-poor gap to how their children are scoring on international tests. You can compare two countries as well.
 Fascinating to contemplate the differences in personal satisfaction between the countries - like, for instance, why Portugal is way out in front of Mexico in all the indicators for a good life, yet Mexicans report being eight times more satisfied with their lives. 

Gone to the dogs

   One of the best and worst things about life in Copan Ruinas is all the dogs that roam the streets.
   What's bad is that many of them are sick and starving, and at endless risk of being the next victims of the municipally organized purges that are organized every once in a while to "control" the stray-dog situation.
   What's good is that a dog lover can gain a whole lot of new friends just by putting out bowls of dog food and water on a regular basis. I love the many dogs that pass by our house every morning now for a snack and some affection. It's not easy to make human friends in a foreign land, but the dogs are always happy to see a new soft touch in town.
   Thought my dog-crazy friends might enjoy a pictorial post featuring the 10 dogs that regularly visit our house. I'm pretty sure all of them have owners, and I've included the names of those we know. The others probably have names, too, but for the most part I've adopted my spouse's habit of just calling them by whatever descriptive phrase brings that dog to mind. Hope you like my pack.

Coquetta. That's her real name. She lives about half a block away from us, and is at our house so often that we tend to think of her as "our" dog. That said, Paul got mad at me this morning when he got up earlier than me and discovered her sleeping on the couch. She's not supposed to stay over, but I'd gotten up in the night and let her in rather than leave her in the rain. Come on, Paul.

Egel. That's his real name, too. He lives in the same house as Coquetta and is her best buddy. She usually arrives with Egel early in the morning - he can't squeeze through the patio gate but he waits patiently outside the front door for us to bring him some food. He is a completely lovely dog, and virtually all the women I know who have met him have been completely smitten.

Luna. This poor dog was scalded with boiling water at some point when a restaurant owner up the street was throwing out a potful of water (hopefully without the intent of hitting Luna). That's why she's got those black, hairless strips - they're the scar tissue. She is so skittery as a result that no one can get anywhere near her. We just put out her food and let her be.

Ossito, which is Spanish for "teddy bear." He's one of four pups Coquetta had earlier this year, and lives in the same house (5 dogs in total). We've just started to see him coming around with the other dogs for the morning feed. I don't know if that's a good development, but damn, he's cute.

And here's...Ossito. Yup, two teddy bears. This fellow lives on the other side of us and is in fact quite a pampered pet, but he still comes by to look for any bits of dog food the other dogs missed. He also appreciates the bowl of water, as even people who love their dogs here appear to forget the basics fairly often.

We call this one Shepherd Dog. She's got a name but I can never remember it. She lives in the same house with Coquetta, Egel, etc., but we don't see her too often. She'll let you pet her but isn't particularly interested in people. She looks like she's had a lot of puppies in her day. You don't want to think about the life expectancy of a Copan puppy.

Black Stink Dog and her daughter Crazy Pup. Black Stink got her name because she'd recently had a litter of puppies and was bone-thin when we first met her, and stunk ferociously. Crazy Pup, who just might be the progeny of Egel, is a sweet but excitable dog who would happily knock the dog-food bag out of your hand and eat every scrap if given the option.

Brindl Dog - another female who has clearly had way too many litters. Interesting fact: There is NO veterinarian in Copan Ruinas, or in any community closer than 3 hours away. Nobody does spaying or neutering. Brindl Dog is too big to fit through those little arches at the bottom of the gate, so she just shows up and waits to be noticed. In the dog hierarchy, she can only be fed if Egel and Black Stink are nowhere in sight, because otherwise they'll chase her off. She's sweet-natured but timid. So many of the dogs are used to being hit that they cringe when you reach out to pat them. Very sad.








Sausage Dog. She's round and fat from her happy days spent  outside the fried-chicken store over on the next block. I'm sure she must get loads of good food. So she doesn't really need to be lured by me over to our house for some dog food, but she's very nice to pet and has the loveliest grin, which sucks me in every time when I walk past the chicken place on my way home.

Face first into the culture

We spent a lot of time talking about culture in the Cuso International training we took in Canada before moving to Honduras last year. The course facilitators cautioned us repeatedly that real cultural differences go much deeper than the clothing styles, language, food and general habits of a country that a foreigner first notices.

They were right. It’s the “soft culture” stuff you have to watch out for – the things you tend not to see until they trip you up.

For instance, I now recognize that I’m much too direct in my interactions with people here. I give people a quick hello and then bam, I'm on to whatever topic I'm there for. It wasn’t a problem in the early months when my Spanish skills were in their infancy, but it’s becoming more of an issue now that I can actually talk.

Cuso did alert us to the cultural differences around conversation, blunt talkers not being the general rule in countries like Honduras. Still, it’s tough to curb that instinct.

Hondurans will spend a good 10 minutes of gentle warm-up with somebody before they get to the point: how's the kids; boy, it's been hot this past week; are those chilies you've got planted over there? If you’ve come to their house to talk business, expect to pull up a chair on the porch, drink a big glass of horchata, and wait and wait before anyone gets around to the real reason for the visit. Even the emails down here start with a couple of paragraphs of abrazos (hugs) and blessings from God before they cut to the chase.

Then there’s shop culture. In the small stores especially, people don’t really line up to pay for their things. It’s more of a horizontal exercise, with everyone standing along the counter in an unclear order waiting for the clerk to give them a signal that it’s their turn. None of the customers ever shows so much as a hint of impatience while experiencing this.

At first I stood back at a respectful distance, fearful of looking like the big, pushy gringa demanding service first. But you can stand there a long time if you don’t get at least a little pushy. Now I make an effort to inch closer to the counter as I wait, and have taken up the habit of my fellow customers of having money clearly evident in my hand. It seems to help.

The other day when I was at a drug store buying hair product, the clerk fetched a co-worker from the other side of the store and they proceeded to have an intense conversation with each other about how the other young woman got her hair so shiny and smooth.

At first I was baffled, and slightly irritated that the clerk had chosen to get into a personal conversation before she rang through my sale. But then it dawned on me that the exchange was for my benefit. They were making suggestions to me, in their indirect way, about products I might want to try to get the same luxe hair as the other girl.

I admit, the indirectness is one of the parts of Honduras culture that I like the least. No big deal when it manifests as two young women dropping hints about hair products, but it’s a real irritant when you’re trying to resolve a problem.

 Rather than just give it to you straight and risk that you won’t like what you hear, people will say whatever they think will make you go away happy. But the third or fourth time that happens and the problem is still no nearer to being resolved, let me tell you, you’re no longer going away happy.

I’ve learned to quit asking people for directions, or what time the parade starts, or where the meeting’s going to be. It seems they can’t bring themselves to tell you that they don’t have a clue. So they just make something up.

One night in Santa Rosa de Copan, we wandered for almost an hour on the advice of six different locals we asked for help, looking for a restaurant that turned out to be two minutes away from our hotel. I’ve had similar experiences when I’ve asked about which bus to catch, or when the next one was leaving. Or from where.

But hey, so we get lost once in a while. So we experience occasional bouts of unbearable frustration trying to resolve a customer-service problem that is never, ever going to get resolved. I like the place, and in fact am starting to feel the cultural disconnect more now when I’m back in the impersonal, insulated and harried culture of my own land.

I like that people want to talk here. I’m even getting better at not glancing around nervously during our conversations to see what time it is and whether I’m late, because I’ve now been here long enough to know that whoever I’m rushing off to see will almost certainly show up later than me anyway. I like the ritual of greeting every person I walk past.

And sometimes, the fellow from the Copan Ruinas post office runs out into the street as my spouse or I are passing by to tell us that we’ve got mail. Now there’s a cultural difference I could get used to.

The tenacity of hope

Spending every Sunday for more than a year now with a ragtag group of kids from deprived, troubled childhoods has turned out to be a surprisingly heartening experience.
The kids at Angelitos Felices foster home were like little cyphers to me when I first started volunteering there last April. Their squeaky little voices were impossible for me to understand in those early days of learning Spanish, and I also found it hard to see past the overwhelming grimness of where they were living to even consider getting to know them as individuals and not just tragic cases of societal neglect.
But time passes, and now we talk a lot: About painful teeth; how to use a tampon; why you can't wear your brother's shoes when he's got foot fungus; why you shouldn't toss garbage on the ground. We talk about all the things they want and need, from new shoes or a belt to hold up their pants to sno-cones, big wedge-soled flip flops just like mine, a bracelet, a wind-up car, a collared shirt sporting their school logo, green mangos stolen from a neighbour's big tree.
We talk about the scantily clad women who work the cantinas that we pass by on our twice-monthly walk to the pool. The man with no legs. The drunks in the square. There has even been a couple of carefully worded conversations about birth control with some of the older girls, and some equally careful talk about their disappointment at being left to grow up without parents at Angelitos.
All of it has served to remind me of how much we have in common with each other regardless of how different the circumstances of our lives. These kids' childhoods look nothing like those of my own children's in terms of creature comforts, decent schools, free health care, good food and fun. And yet the things that preoccupy them, thrill them, puzzle them and keep them moving forward are so similar.
When I first got involved at Angelitos, it felt almost like palliative care. I didn't think anything I could do would actually change the future for the 25 children who live there, but that I ought to try nonetheless to make things more comfortable for them in the time I was here.

But now that I've had time to get to know them, I see how capable they really are, and that we're each bringing something to this partnership we've developed. They are survivors: Much healthier than you'd ever expect given the near-complete absence of medical or preventive care; as tenacious and optimistic as Tigger when it comes to bouncing back from endless disappointments. They're a remarkable group of kids.
No need to get all Pollyanna about any of this, mind you. They're still almost certainly heading into hard lives of profound poverty, and I worry constantly about the older girls ending up pregnant and the older boys being lured into the dangerous world of gangs and low-level drug trafficking. The rainy season will be starting any day now, launching months of impetigo, fungus and staph infections that will spread like an Australian bush fire through the place. At least four of the kids have significant developmental disabilities, and all the charming, cheerful attributes in the world won't keep them on their feet in a country without social supports.
But still, the longer I'm around the children, the more hope I feel. They've got way more strength and purpose than I gave them credit for initially. I see that there are things I can do in these two years that - while falling well short of miracles - will build on the inner resources they already have and leave them in better shape for the journey that lies ahead.
The 13-year-old with rock-bottom self-esteem and developmental problems, for instance. I couldn't have known when we started our pool visits that she'd turn out to have a knack for swimming, or that she'd learn faster than any of the other kids. But that's what happened, and I see the impact it has had on her every time I catch her blissed-out face as she swims (and swims and swims) in the deep end of the pool.
The eight-year-old known for breaking things in fits of anger. He's not a bad kid at all, just a frustrated one who's so eager to please that any concrete, well-explained task turns him into a conscientous, thorough "worker."
The nine-year-old who tends to get excluded from fun activities as punishment for acting out. She's just an independent thinker who hates being ordered to do things without any explanation as to why. It's not in her nature to go along, but now she understands that a little going along keeps everyone happy and gets her out of Angelitos more often.
The boy on the edge of puberty, the one I fear for the most in terms of gang involvement. Something as simple as a hug, or a thrill ride at the carnival that gets him laughing like crazy, takes that hint of menace right out of his eyes and returns him to the little boy he still is. It took him longer than the other kids to learn to swim, but you can see the sweet victory in his eyes now that he, too, can manage the deep end of the pool.
Plant seeds, they always tell you in social justice work. The metaphor makes me crazy, because my nature is to want a whole new garden. But a year passes, and I see these little sprouts thriving. 

What's it going to take to set things right?

The latest stats are in around poverty in Honduras, and as profoundly discouraging as ever. Almost two million people - a quarter of the population - are living on the equivalent of a buck a day, and another 2.5 million aren't doing much better. Another 1.6 million are living in relative poverty
Contrast that against the amount of aid that has poured into the country in the last decade, and you can't help but wonder what it all means. The U.S. alone has spent $836 million in grants and aid to Honduras since 2003, and hundreds of European and Asian organizations and governments have sent major money into the country as well.
And yet here the country sits, dirt poor and falling in the international rankings even while other Latin American countries are on the way up. The situation is even more desperate in the rural areas, where as many as eight in 10 people are living in poverty.
 We can't expect aid dollars to work miracles, of course. But the stats are certainly suggesting that it might be time to refocus those strategies. And if there's anyone left who believes that "trickle down economics" work to alleviate poverty, I'd say Honduras provides a rather stunning example to the contrary.
My own opinion of international aid has grown more uncertain with each passing day in a developing country. (If you can even call a country "developing" when it's so obviously stalled out.) I suppose things would be a whole lot worse in Honduras without it, but how is it that all that money and goodwill hasn't amounted to more meaningful change?
I like the comments of Honduran economist Carlos Urbizo, quoted in the La Prensa story this week. "The fight is not against poverty," said Urbizo. "It's against a political and economic system that generates poverty. The existing undemocratic system, the capitalist system we have...it does not allow this situation to improve."
Not that there's anything wrong with capitalism as a tool for eradicating poverty. There's no way out without money. But in this global world, unbridled capitalism in a country with as weak a government structure as Honduras is really just a route to great wealth for those who already have it and stagnation for everybody else.
Global capitalism has, for instance, brought maquilas to Honduras. There's a good chance you have clothes in your closet right now that were made in one of the big factories here, which employ more than 120,000 people and generate a third of Honduras's GDP. The wheels of the developed world turn on the goods and services produced in poor countries.
But while the maquila jobs pay better than a lot of jobs in the country, the pay isn't enough to lift families into a permanently better standard of living. (Minimum wage for a maquila worker is about $240 a month).
It isn't enough to cover the considerable costs of life in a country without decent public health care or education. It isn't enough to offer any hope for children in the family to get the kind of education and opportunity that might lift them up in turn. At best, it keeps somebody's head above water.
And that's just the maquila jobs. I wondered why the woman who cleans my house seemed so attached to us, then discovered that she has to work almost three full days at another job to match the $8 we pay her for an hour or two of cleaning once a week. Wages are brutally low across the board in Honduras, and way out of balance with the cost of living.
What's to be done? Probably a thousand different things, but three come to my mind immediately: A functioning tax system capable of funding all the basics of a civil society; a government that loves its country and strives every day to do right by it; and a vastly improved education system and international exchanges to ensure Honduran kids stand a chance of being able to compete in a global market.
Those are fundamental changes that Hondurans have to make for themselves. But if more aid dollars focused on helping such cultural shifts happen, maybe we'd start getting somewhere. If foreign governments and companies making money in Honduras actively took an interest in the country and not just in its minerals, palm oil and cheap labour, maybe the children of my underpaid co-workers might actually face a brighter economic future.
Until then, it's just another bowl of soup on the table to stave off the day's hunger. Not much future in that.

Un regalo mas especial - mi mundo en espanol

Just to reaffirm that old dogs can still learn new tricks, how's this news: I'm reading Ken Follett's latest book in Spanish.
Yes, 16 months after landing in a Spanish-speaking country with Spanish-language skills that were not much more than tourist grade, I am now making my way through an epic set in the pre-war years as Hitler rises to power. And I'm understanding it (well, mostly).
I've loved this time in Honduras for all kinds of reasons. But I think I might love it most for the opportunity it has given me to finally fulfill my dream to learn Spanish.
Ever since my daughter Regan won a trip for two to Acapulco in 1993 and took me, I have wanted to be able to communicate in this beautiful language. Every time my spouse and I went back to Mexico for one holiday after another, I yearned for the day when I could just sit on a bus and understand the melodic conversations going on around me.
OK, I'm not quite there yet - last night when I was travelling in a car with a bunch of my co-workers, there were large chunks of their conversation that I couldn't get. I'll know that I'm genuinely fluent when I can a) Understand a group of friends chatting amiably to each other; and b) Comprehend everything said in a tele-novela episode.
But still, things have come a long, long way. People ask me questions and I answer, and no longer do they give me that curious look that signals that I clearly didn't understand what they were asking. I chat with cab drivers, shop owners, restaurant staff, campesinos (people from the country are very challenging to understand). I ask all the pent-up questions I've had inside me for years, my  inner journalist at last free to emerge in both English and Spanish.
That's not to say I don't make mistakes, mind you. In fact, I probably make more than ever, given that I'm speaking more than ever. But at least I hear most of them now, and know how to correct them.
And while it's always a bit embarrassing to have to blunder around in a new language, the truth is that the more I speak, the better I get. Like everything else, learning a new language really comes down to practise, practise, practise.
The best thing I ever did was start reading out loud. I now do this for at least 10 minutes every day. I don't know what it is about it, but it really works.
For one thing, it forces you to hear your own pronunciation and adjust accordingly. But there's also something about the Spanish words falling on your own ears. It's like it triggers something in your brain and makes it easier to understand others speaking Spanish. All those primary-school teachers hounding us to stand up and read out loud obviously knew what they were doing.
I find myself in many situations through my work where I have to take notes, very familiar to me after all my years in journalism. Increasingly, I'm trying to take those notes in Spanish rather than jot in English and translate later. It's much harder and slower, but again, it seems to me that it opens up some new language pathway in my brain when I do that.
Immersion is obviously a critical part of all this progress. How wonderful to have landed in a workplace where nobody spoke English. While it made for a stressful couple of months, I am so grateful to have had no choice but to figure things out in Spanish.
And how wonderful that Cuso International took a chance on me. They gambled that they could put me into a position that I didn't have the language skills for and I would pick it up from there. I don't know if I would have had that same level of confidence in me, but I'm very glad that Cuso did.
So go on, old dogs, get out there and learn new tricks. Our dreams aren't getting any younger.

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?

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.