Five minutes of research could have spared us this uninformed prattle on InSite

   It almost felt good to experience the righteous rage rising in me this morning when I read that uninformed column by Licia Corbella in the Calgary Herald trying to draw a link between the overdose death of actor Cory Monteith and Vancouver's supervised injection site. I'd forgotten how much I love to hate lazy, ignorant commentary, so deliciously wide open to being torn apart by anyone with the slightest understanding of the issue at hand.
    How long would it have taken for Corbella to have gone to the Insite web site and learned more about the services, the clients, the lives saved - five minutes, maybe? Ah, but she didn't want facts. She wanted to make her very strange case that Cory Monteith overdosed because he was in Vancouver, at a hotel close to the "cancerous lesion" that is the Downtown Eastside, and that he might still be alive today if he'd had the good sense to visit a different Canadian city.
    Reasoning that the Glee actor surely wouldn't have brought drugs across the border, Corbella writes that he either bought them in Vancouver or "had a gofer do it for him by visiting InSite..." Can she possibly believe that a project as controversial as one that helps people with heroin addictions inject safely would risk it all by selling heroin to anyone, let alone a celebrity's "gofer?"
   "Proponents of safe injection sites argue that such harm-reduction strategies save lives and that’s inarguably true. After all, if an injection drug user overdoses in the safe injection site, then a nurse is on hand to offer assistance and call an ambulance. This has happened numerous times," writes Corbella. (True, Licia - 1,418 times to be precise. But then, you would have known that if you'd visited InSite's web site.)
  "But no one ever asks how many people have died of drug overdoses who use the safe injection site as a legally safe place to procure drugs," she goes on to say.
    Well, Licia, that's because you can't buy drugs at InSite, legally or otherwise. And while I hate to belabour a point, you would have known that had you bothered to do one damn bit of research into any of this.
    Sometime in the 1990s, it appears that Corbella met a sex worker in Toronto who was unable to find heroin one night. Corbella has concluded from this incident that this must mean drugs are very difficult to buy in any city other than Vancouver.
    "Would Cory Monteith still be alive had he been visiting Halifax, Toronto or Calgary instead of Vancouver? In my view, it’s highly likely," she writes.

    That is such a profoundly weird thing to say that in fairness, we should probably just presume Corbella was feeling the pressure to pad out her scant column and threw that thought in at the last minute just to bump up the word count.

     But if she truly believes that all of Canada's drug use is concentrated solely in one city in one province, perhaps she should browse through the RCMP report on illicit drug use and note that in fact, it's fairly evenly distributed from coast to coast. 

    As for heroin specifically, port cities like Vancouver have traditionally had more access to it, but that hasn't stopped the proliferation of heroin substitutes being widely available in other cities. One Toronto hospital says it sees 300 overdose deaths a year from oxycontin alone, the prescription drug known as "hillbilly heroin." I suspect poor Cory Monteith could have found what he was looking for regardless of where he was that night.
    Were Licia Corbella just some wacky blogger throwing her wildly uninformed opinions around, no big deal. There are a million of them out there. We're all going to have to be much more careful about where we get our information from, because we're falling headfirst into a scandal-sheet world where anyone with an internet connection can represent themselves as a "news source."
    But Corbella is the editorial page editor for the Calgary Herald. I stand on guard for freedom of expression, but that's not what we're talking about here. This is about a disturbing level of factual error. It scares me to think that the editorial page editor for a major daily newspaper wrote something so careless, sloppy and inaccurate, and scares me even more that her bosses just stepped out of the way and let it run.
    As for the Downtown Eastside being a "cancerous lesion," I was there in April at the Army and Navy sale and was struck by how much better the neighbourhood looked. May Corbella and her family never have to experience the poverty, addiction, disability and trauma that have created the DTES, but in the meantime she'd do well to open up those half-shut eyes of hers and see the cheery, resilient community that exists against all odds on those tough streets. 

A hot day for democracy

   

The Honduran Congreso Nacional came to town yesterday, part of a mobile-meeting plan for the legislative branch of government that gets the politicians out of the capital once in a while to hear from "the people." Apparently President Porfirio Lobo was here, too, but all I know of that is I heard a helicopter coming in for a landing around 2 p.m., such a rare event in Copan Ruinas that it had to mean something big.
    Congress met in the municipal hall near Parque Central, so I wandered down to the park yesterday morning to see what I could see. Not much, as it turns out. They'd set up a giant screen in the square so people could see what was going on inside, but you couldn't actually get into the room without an invitation. Let me tell you, sitting in the scorching sun watching a giant screen is less fun than you'd think, so after about an hour and a half I packed it in.
    Even without the big screen, any observant Copaneco would have recognized that something was up in the square yesterday. Way more military presence, for one thing. But I thought the bigger giveaway was the Honduran man in shorts and sports sandals that wandered in and out of the meeting. A Honduran in an outfit like that in Copan Ruinas - well, it just doesn't happen. A man dressed like that is making a pretty clear statement that he's not from around here.
    Overall, the men inside the room were notable for their white guayaberas - the popular cotton dress shirts that men of higher ranking wear in Latin America - their good haircuts and an overall healthy glow. The men outside the room - sitting in the square with me, watching that big-screen TV intently in hopes of hearing something that might bring better roads, more jobs, help for their ailing coffee crops - were notable for their well-worn jeans, shellacked cowboy hats and sinewy skinniness.

Business as usual for passing vendors

    As for what they were talking about inside that room, I saw a lot of well-groomed Copanecos talking politely about the state of the roads, plans to reawaken the moribund tourism industry, the impact of the coffee-rust fungus on local crops. And I saw members of Congress politely thanking the presenters and quickly moving onto the next item of business.  I went to a public cabinet meeting of the B.C. government a few years back when they were really enthusiastic about doing such things, and yesterday's event looked about the same.
     Was democracy served? Hard to say, but you have to appreciate the effort. I won't be holding my breath for results, but there's something to be said for just showing up.
    And if nothing else, it brought the insecticide trucks out the night before to blast away the bug population (and anyone foolish enough to have opened their front door to see what all the hissing commotion was about). When the Congreso Nacional shows up in town, the cockroaches better run. 

The Sound of Sangre: Let's help these guys tell a good story

 
If you like documentary film, folk music of a very original kind, or Latin America, this project to find a mysterious Honduran band that plays narcocorrido music is worth checking out.
    The two U.S. men spearheading the project, Chris Valdes and Ted Griswold, taught in the Olancho region of Honduras and kept hearing talk of Los Plebes de Olancho, one of the bands in the country that does the very tricky work of sitting down with narcotraficantes working in the cocaine industry and documenting their hair-raising, dangerous stories in songs.
    The bands keep a pretty low profile, but Chris and Ted hope they'll be able to track down Los Plebes and tell the band's own story if they can scratch up the $38,000 they need to make their documentary. They've raised almost $9,000 in a matter of days, so are off to a good start, but they're trying to reach their goal within a month and head back to Honduras in October to start the hunt for Los Plebes. Get your pledge in before the Aug. 16 deadline.
    The result won't be your typical rockumentary - the men hope to use the film to explore the theme of violence in Honduras, and whether narcocorridos glorify the tremendous violence in the cocaine industry or in fact just document what it's like to work in one of the world's most dangerous businesses.
    I'm fascinated by the whole narcotrafico thing now that I'm living in a country where the business is a fact of life and probably an important economic driver if people were being honest about it. So I'm hoping the guys get their documentary off the ground just so I can learn more, seeing as it's one of those things that's kind of hard to quiz people about.
    Copan Ruinas is located a mere 10 kilometres from the Guatemala border, and thus a key point for those who move cocaine for a living. I'm pretty sure the money from that business funds fancy truck purchases and repairs, real estate investment, big dinners at high-end restaurants, hotel getaways, a whole lot of construction in town, and private-school tuition for the kids.
   The industry is completely integrated into "normal" life here. Nobody likes to talk about it, but you'd have to be blind not to see the impact it has on the local economy. It's just not possible to draw the line where legitimate income sources stop and drug money begins - in Honduras or anywhere that illegal drug production and distribution takes place. (Like in my home province of B.C., where marijuana production and sales generate a reported $6 billion a year.)
   Good luck, Chris and Ted. Hope you find the money, find the band, and tell a story that's overdue to be told.
     Here's a link to the promotional video for The Sound of Sangre. And check out Los Plebes de Olancho on YouTube.

Feeding the fire in the most dangerous country in the world

   No one in the world is at greater risk of violent death than a Honduran.

   Every 73 minutes, a Honduran is murdered in this country. That breathtaking fact not only signifies a tremendous loss of men in their prime economic years, who account for 92 per cent of the victims, but a life turned upside down for the thousands of women and children those dead men leave behind.

   Those of us who live in Honduras hear the murder rate so often that it starts to become meaningless: 85.5 violent deaths per 100,000. But you need only take a look at violent-death statistics in war-torn countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to get a sense of just how over-the-top that homicide rate really is.

   In Afghanistan in 2011, for instance, 3,021 civilians died violently. In Honduras in that same year, more than twice that number died violently – 6,239. Last year in Iraq, 4,753 civilians died violently. Last year in Honduras, there were 7,172 homicides.  In any given 18-month period, Honduras records more violent deaths than the total number of Afghanistan military and police forces killed in a decade of war.

   How can this be? Where is the global outrage? Everybody’s quick with the scary travel advisories, but those do little but add economic woes to the plight of Hondurans who are living in a country devastated by murder. How might the world react if, say, 20 citizens of London, England (which has about the same population as Honduras) were dying violently every single day?

   Violence in Latin America tends to be a subject that gets a shrug from the developed world, as if the tired stereotype of hot-blooded Latins is enough to explain the insanity going on in Honduras. We shake our heads, put on our sad faces and lament a “violent” culture.

   Ah, but the developed world is so complicit in the violence. We of the enviably low homicide rates are the profiteers who sell the guns to Honduras, and the buyers of the 200 metric tonnes of cocaine that pass through the country every year on its way to markets in the U.S., Mexico and Canada. They do the killing, but it’s our money and our arms that make it possible.

   It's striking to see just how many peace-loving countries make big money from manufacturing and exporting guns. The U.S. leads the world with $845 million or so in gun exports every year, followed by Italy, Germany and Brazil. Canada, Finland, the UK, Spain and Japan are all “Tier 3” countries that have had annual exports of $100 million at various times over the last decade.

   An argument could be made that a country experiencing as much violence as Honduras would find a way to kill people regardless of whether guns were readily available. But the fact that they are certainly makes things easier. Almost 85 per cent of the violent deaths in Honduras are the result of firearms.

The country imported more than $13 million in small arms in 2011. Mexico considers Honduras one of its best customers for small arms, as does the Philippines. An AK-47 here sells for a mere $200, compared to $500 in the U.S.

   As someone who has lived here for a year and a half without fearing for my life, I want to stress that the violence in Honduras is almost exclusively focused on Hondurans. Even though there are virtually no statistics kept that might clarify who is most at risk, I feel confident in saying that those who work in the cocaine-distribution business, associate with anyone in that line of work, are gang members or live in gang-controlled barrios in the big cities are disproportionately affected by the violence.

   But given that you really can get away with murder in Honduras – the result of an overwhelmed and compromised justice system – there are also those who kill as a way to settle scores or retaliate for real or imagined crimes against them or someone in their family. Virtually everyone I’ve met here has at least one friend or family member who was murdered in recent years. In the last five years, murder has somehow become “normal” in this deeply Christian country.

   The problems require a much bigger global response than just more development aid. Funds to help rural Hondurans grow more food, prepare for the next flood or understand domestic violence are all good things, but they’re not going to resolve mass murder. You can come on down to put a new roof on a school or distribute eyeglasses to grateful campesinos, but they’re still going to be living in the most dangerous country in the world.

   Hondurans aren’t killing each other because they’re poor, hungry and uneducated (although those are all justifiable worries in their own way). They’re killing each other because the entire country is neck-deep in an illegal industry that countries like mine and yours fund, and armed to the teeth with guns that we sell them.

   What can be done? First, take responsibility. If we’re buying the drugs and selling the guns, then this terrible violence belongs to all of us. The developed countries of the world have an ethical responsibility to stand shoulder to shoulder with Hondurans in resolving this crisis.

   Does the country need a truth commission? An international intervention? A revolution? An end to the destructive, stupid belief that we can “just say no” and drug use will go away?

   Perhaps all of the above. But first and foremost, we the privileged need to step up and take ownership of this tragedy that we have wrought. We got Hondurans into this. They need our help to get out.

The fine line between culture and stagnation

   

Where is the line between cultural differences and bad practices? That question has weighed on me the most in my time in Honduras.

    A foreigner rightly needs to come into a new country prepared to respect the culture of the place. The world doesn’t need any more people who show up dragging all their developed-world baggage behind them and expecting everything to be just like it is back home.

    But just because something is part of the culture doesn’t automatically mean it’s good. We’ve all worked in places – or perhaps grown up in families – where the culture was a problem and needed to be changed. That’s true in Honduras, too, but it’s much more challenging for me as a cultural outsider to identify what’s a “negative” and what’s just different from what I’m used to.

    The workplace, for instance. Part of the culture, at least here in Copan Ruinas, is to have long lunch hours and many more social encounters over the course of the day than would ever be tolerated in a Canadian work environment. The manager in me thinks a lot of time gets wasted as a result of that, but I’ve also come to see that socializing and family time are such a part of Honduran life that you can’t really judge those long, chatty coffee breaks by the same standards I use to define workplace efficiency.

    So we’ll chalk that one up to cultural differences, and I’ll just have to adapt. But there are other work practices that I think are actually holding the organization back: Disorganized and pointless meetings; poor hiring practices; a manana mentality that jams up project flow; no processes for identifying and resolving problems within the team; a rigid hierarchy that stops grassroots creativity and innovation. They are problems common to my particular office, the organization overall and – from what I’ve seen – many other Honduran workplaces.

    Just to be clear, my role here in Honduras as a Cuso International volunteer is to help a small Honduran NGO get better at communications. Full stop. I have not been sent here to analyse the organization and report back on their management practices.

     But being a manager changes your perspective forever, and I can’t stop myself from seeing the problems. More and more I’m looking for opportunities to talk to my co-workers about such things – practices that would reduce frustration, staff turnover, and general office malaise, strategies for moving the organization toward better salaries and longer-term contracts for more stability.

     Sometimes I fear I’m fomenting rebellion and pushing my own cultural values as “better.” But ultimately, I think I’m right. Unless Honduras wants to be a developing country forever, it’s going to need to adapt its work culture to follow the lead of developed countries in creating efficient, effective workplaces that can hold their own in a global market. And that includes little NGOs, too, because trying to get your hands on scarce international development dollars is a competitive business.

    Then there’s education. For all kinds of reasons, education is not a cultural priority in Honduras. Partly it’s because nothing about getting an education is easy here – it’s expensive, logistically difficult, often unavailable, a low priority for a hungry family, and notoriously poor quality to boot.  But I suspect it’s also because parents who have had little formal schooling themselves simply can’t understand the importance of a good education.

    On the one hand, Hondurans have all sorts of life skills and abilities that have developed in the absence of formal education. Most of them have no choice but to get down to the business of life at age 12 or even younger, while Canadians will often be in their mid-20s or even their 30s before they finish up school and enter the workplace permanently. As a result, most of the young Hondurans I’ve met are much more responsible and competent than people of the same age back in Canada, and the whole country is unbelievably resilient.

    On the other, the undervaluing of education (and the underfunding of it) is a cultural practice that has to go if Honduras ever hopes to get past this crushing poverty and endless lurching from one crisis to another. It’s not just about knowing how to read, write and work with numbers, it’s about all the things that a good general education gets you: an informed world view; exposure to new ways of doing things and different ways of thinking; an appreciation and desire for a functional society and how one goes about creating that.

    I could go on. Tortillas, beans and Coca-Cola: Endearing cultural practice or nutritional suicide? Children essentially raising themselves: A living example of that maxim about how it takes a village to raise a child, or bad parenting? Indifference and neglect of animals: The hallmark of a culture where domestic animals exist for work rather than pleasure, or just plain cruelty?

    You get the gist. I need to adapt, but so does Honduras. “It is a bad plan that admits of no modification," said Syrian writer Publilius Syrus way back in the 1^st century. (Never heard of him, but his quote suits my argument.) Here’s to cultural diversity, and to knowing when it’s getting in your way. 

Gay rights is part of a development plan too

   

   As crazy as this sounds now, I didn’t think about the existence of gay people until I was 24. My high school class at school had a couple of really great teachers who we all knew had been “roommates” for decades, and perhaps I had a few thoughts about such things at that time. But it wasn’t until I walked into a Courtenay bar in 1981 with a very pretty male friend of mine that it sunk in, what with all the male attention he got. |

   It was one of those, “Wow, really?” moments that changes your world view in an instant. I had to rethink everything I thought I knew.  But from the get-go it never occurred to me to judge anyone solely based on the gender of who they choose to love. So after that first jolt of understanding, I never considered it a big deal - or anyone's business - that someone was gay, let alone an excuse for denying people basic rights.

   As a Canadian, I’m very proud to hail from a country that now recognizes that working up a sweat about sexual orientation is not only pointless, but harmful and offensive. I got to thinking about Canada last week while writing a blog for July 1, and realized that the country’s efforts on behalf of gay rights is one of the things that makes me feel proudest about being Canadian.

   But now I live in Honduras, where you’d have to be one brave soul to step out of the closet.  It’s like stepping back into 1950s North America, all repression and denial. While nobody talks about any of it, my impression is that marriages of convenience and extremely low-profile trips to secret gay-friendly enclaves are about as good as it gets for people here, and all of it undertaken at huge personal risk.

   Maybe a month ago at my work, a big stack of 2013 datebooks arrived that had been put together by one of my organization’s major funders, a European NGO. All the big European funders have got it going on around gay rights, so the datebook included a sweet story out of South America about a lesbian couple whose farm was thriving thanks to help from one of the projects the funder supported.

   Well. My co-workers, who are generally lovely, caring people, were completely scandalized by that story. They are very, very Christian, and conservative in their thinking. For that reason I usually steer clear of subjects that I know we’re going to disagree on. I couldn’t let this one go, of course, but I could tell they were just gritting their teeth through my rant and waiting to get back to feeling shocked and disgusted.

  Why, why, would anyone want to make a big deal about something that’s essentially about love? I have no idea. Yet living here has reminded me of just how much hatred and misunderstanding still exist in so many countries. I appreciate the sensitive language that international funders put into their contracts in Honduras to try to bring home the idea of equal treatment for all, but this place needs a lot more than that to get past its deep prejudices on this issue.

   Send down the gay-awareness squad and let's get this thing done. 

O Canada, you'll always be my girl

Dear Canada:

It’s been a year and a half since we parted, and I know I said some mean things in those emotional days toward the end. But I’ve been thinking about you a lot today. I saw a photo of you on Facebook, with that bright blue sky and sharp sunlight that I remember so well from the days when everything was going right. And suddenly I was lost in a thousand memories of the good times we had together.

   Putting some distance between us has been good for me. There were times when I loved your temperate spirit and tidy habits, but I hated that 1000-yard stare you’d get in your eyes when the talk turned to politics. There’s so much about you that’s amazing and good, but sometimes I wonder if you even notice how time has changed you, hardened your heart.

    But today, I’m missing you. I am remembering you on the last July 1 we had together, when I sat on the shores of Esquimalt Lagoon in the familiar chilled sunshine of early summer on the West Coast looking out at all the red and white shirts, umbrellas, flags and beach paraphernalia that people had brought to celebrate your birthday. I couldn’t have loved you more that day. The truth is, I was already thinking about leaving you, but that was the day I knew there were parts of me that would always be yours.

   I’m living with someone else now, as you’ve probably heard. I couldn’t have picked someone less like you if I’d tried. There you are with your squeaky-clean parks, safe roads and campaigns to stop teens from using tanning beds, and he’s chucking his garbage out the window and running around with guns and drugs. You’re stressing out over the FSA scores of your well-educated young people in their fully equipped, competent schools, and my new guy is shoving 90 kids into a dishevelled classroom with an untrained teacher and counting it as a major win if they make it through Grade 6.

    I admit, I do like a bad boy. There’s something thrilling about being with someone who feels a bit dangerous, about finding yourself in situations that are right on the edge of uncomfortable yet at the same time, leave you feeling completely alive. Today, though, I’m missing your moderate ways, and how I always knew where I stood with you. Yes, your predictability and need to control drove me completely mad sometimes, but I knew you’d be there if I needed you.

    This new guy – not so much. I saw a bad bus accident last week and understood in a flash that if I were ever in an accident like that, he’d ditch me in a heartbeat. He’d wish me luck and then throw me bleeding into the back of a passing pickup truck headed toward the nearest broken-down, unfunded public hospital, and that would be the last time I’d cross his mind. It shames me to admit this, Canada, but I’d come limping home to you.

     It’s exhilarating to ride down scary roads in the dark in the back of a truck, with no idea what might happen next. But standing in your ample wilderness, unafraid that the guy coming toward me is eyeing up my camera or that I’m about to stumble upon an illegal dump or cocaine drop zone – well, that’s its own kind of exhilaration.

    Your political correctness got to me sometimes, it’s true. But your heart is just and good, and I love that you were out there with gay rights even while so much of the world continues to drag its feet on such a fundamental fairness. I’ve overheard my new man making homophobic comments, and I know I could never last with someone like that, even if he does embrace life with a vigour and sense of fun that I rarely saw in you.

    O Canada, I wish I could lie down in your cool, green lap right now, enjoying all the silence that coast-to-coast noise bylaws and dedicated parkland can buy. I wish I was sitting down to one of your multicultural buffets, loading my plate with sushi, salt and pepper squid, lasagne, baklava, pho, perogies, blintzes and French pastries.

     My bad boy eats beans and tortillas pretty much every day.  I admire his ability to get by on the things he can actually grow. But today I am dreaming of your wildly ethnic palate and generous food-import budget.

    I’m a wanderer, Canada. I think you always knew that. I don’t imagine you were that surprised when I left, what with the problems we’d been starting to have. There’s part of me that wishes I could tell you that I’m done with my dallying and ready to come home to you, but there’s another part of me that has never felt more alive since I put you behind me.

    But you are in my soul forever. I had to get away from you to appreciate your sheer functionality and all the green, clean spaces and mannered cities you have wrought with your ordered ways. When I think of “civil society,” I think of you. I love your banks, your hospitals, your 7-day return policies. Your internet speeds are amazing.

    Happy birthday, dear one. This new life is changing me, and I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to being a couple again the way we once were. But I’ll always sleep easiest in your arms.  

How good deeds get done

The Louisiana gang, from left: Ronny Sanders, Carl Glover,
Gordon Holley, Jerry Houston, James Davis,
Jeff Hardel and Casey Fair.

The kids at Angelitos Felices children's home will be sleeping comfy tonight on the new beds and mattresses they've now got thanks to some amazing support from a group of Louisiana men.
     Connections are made in strange ways in Honduras, and the connection that brought these men to Angelitos and to me is no exception. The way it came together reminds me that even though I'm a skeptic about stars aligning and God having a plan, some things really do seem to be fated.
    The men belong to the Calvary Baptist Church in Ruston, Louisiana. One of them, Gordon Holley, has been doing projects in Honduras for many years as part of his university work. He came across my blog last year, saw a post I'd written about our work at Angelitos, and sent me an email asking if I'd take him and fellow congregation member James Davis to the home when they visited in December.
     It was James' first visit to Honduras. There's nothing quite like an orphanage in a developing country to open a person's eyes, and he was clearly moved by the rough conditions that the kids lived in. The men had arrived with suitcases full of clothes for the children, but James - a cabinet maker - said he'd be coming back soon to do more.

Jesus, Juan Carlos and Alex moving mattresses

    I figured he meant it at the time, but that wasn't to say he'd actually be back. But sure enough, he sent me an email a couple of months later with a blueprint for beautiful, sturdy bunk beds with cabinets, and asked me to put him in touch with a construction company in Copan so he could organize materials. A couple weeks ago, Gordon and James arrived with five other congregation members and set about building those beds.
     I was away in the Moskitia doing work when they came, so was no help at all for most of the project. But my spouse Paul stepped up to help out with a few roadblocks (like figuring out how to pay the electric bill at Angelitos so that power and water would be reinstated and the men would be
able to use their power tools). The group also drew on support from old friends at Macaw Mountain Bird Park here in Copan to help source and transport more materials after they bought out everything that Copan Ruinas had.
     I returned from my travels in time to meet them for a final breakfast before they headed home to Louisiana last weekend, and to assure them that when the mattresses arrived this week, I'd get them up to Angelitos and onto those beds. The 24 mattresses came in yesterday. My boss Merlin and I hustled them up to the hogar today using a truck from work.

At last - a bed of their own!

   Most of the bigger kids were away at school when we arrived, but three of the younger boys - ages 5, 6 and 8 - rushed out to help us. They diligently dragged one mattress after another upstairs to the sleeping area, and were waiting to help us again when we came back with the second load.
     The mattresses are beauties - six inches thick, covered in plastic to protect them from turning into stinking, filthy things like the bits of worn foam and weary military mattresses that the children have been sleeping on lately. I wouldn't have expected little kids to be quite so excited about a bed, but let me tell you, these guys are pumped. I wish you could see their beaming faces when I ask which bed is theirs and they proudly lead me to their bunk.

    They've never had that before at Angelitos - a bed of their own. A private place for their clothes and personal items, the few that they have. One spot in this impersonal world that is just for them. It's a huge step forward for child dignity.
     So that's how miracles work. It took flesh-and-blood humans to raise the money, build the beds and make this project happen, but there's still something of the divine about how it all came together. Whatever you want to call it, it feels like hope. 

Black, white and the many shades in between

 

  At the risk of starting too many posts with "One thing I've learned from this Cuso volunteer experience...," I have something new to add to the growing list.

    The latest learning is that this work tests your core values, in ways that get right past the pretty words and down to what you can actually live with. What's right? What's wrong? For possibly the first time in my life, I feel like I'm really being tested on the fundamentals of my deep-down self.

   An easy example to start: Child labour. For all my life up until 18 months ago, I was opposed to child labour. I thought it was a good thing to buy more expensive coffee if it meant it had been picked by adults and not little children. 

    Deep down, I remain philosophically opposed to putting children to work. But now I see the issue from a whole other perspective, in which a family could very likely go hungry if their kids aren't allowed to pick coffee during the two-month harvest. What the "fair trade" practice of banning child labour looks like from the point of view of an impoverished coffee-producing country is a system of punishment stacked against the poorest producers, one that forces children to be left at home alone because their parents can no longer take them along when they go out picking coffee. 

   The issue of faith has been a whole other test for me. I've had a complicated relationship for decades with faith, but in Honduras it's something that's so present in my life that I now have no choice but to reflect on what it means to me. 

   The Monday-morning devotionals at my workplace have been a real challenge, early on because I barely understood a word of what was being said and now, because I do. I try to hold my tongue out of respect, but I just couldn't keep my silence when talk turned today to obeying God and ultimately leaving difficult things in His hands to sort out. 

     So what are we to believe, then, in a country where so many unbelievably bad things happen to people all the time - that God has made a decision to really slam it to Honduras? What this country needs is anger, not soothing words about accepting God's plans. I won't pretend to know the ways of God, but I'm pretty sure a person could wait a long time for change if everything was left up to faith.

    But on the same subject, I've also had my secular belief system challenged by seeing just how much good work gets done down here by people motivated by faith. Time and again, the faith community shows up to make things happen in Honduras: Bunk beds for orphans; digging holes and assembling bricks for new water systema; testing children's eyes; providing veterinary care; building schools. As a secular person I want to believe that "doing good" is a universal concept, but what I have seen demonstrated in Honduras is that when push comes to shove, it's mostly the faith community that gets things done.

    Murder. Now there's a topic that I wouldn't have thought I had wiggle room on. But when you live in a country that effectively has no meaningful police or justice system, everything just gets a little greyer. 

    Not that killing another person against their will can ever be justified. But spend time here and you start to see how things might go in a place where there's so little chance that the "bad guy" will ever be arrested, let alone convicted. On a fundamental level I still believe that people taking justice into their own hands is a recipe for disaster. But in the real world I now live in, I get how that could happen. 

    Then there's corruption, a word that you hear virtually every day in Honduras as a way of explaining everything that's wrong with the place. But how do you define "corruption" for the purposes of rooting it out? What are the logical explanations for why it exists, and the logical strategies for dealing with it? How do you get past using it as the catch-all explanation for far more complex problems - a catch-all excuse for why nothing ever changes for the better?

      I'm not even confident you can single out corruption as a bad behaviour in a country where it exists in so many shades of grey (my new colour). Hiring your unqualified cousin for a good job you're fairly certain he can't do, renting the wrong kind of office space for your organization as a favour to your sister's husband - really, doesn't the work have to start there? Or is that just me trying to impose my cultural standards on another country?

    Anyway. All I'm saying is that if you've ever wanted to really test your beliefs and feel out your limits, living and working in a new culture just might be the ticket. I thought I had all the big stuff sorted before I came to Honduras. The longer I stay, the less I'm sure of that. 

     

Scary travel warnings are hurting Honduras

 

One of the papers ran a big feature this week on tourism in Copan Ruinas and what strategies might kickstart the flagging industry. Somebody mentioned that one problem might be that the marketing approach had become too boring.
   Maybe. But I have a feeling that the terrifying travel warnings about Honduras issued by virtually every developed country might be the bigger problem.
   The U.S. State Department issued its scariest warning yet yesterday, raising the spectre of kidnappings, carjackings, "disappearances," rape, and even the possibility that the Honduran police will kill you. The advisory listed 10 of the country's 18 departments as particularly homicide-prone (sorry, Copan, you made the list), but added that no place in the country can be considered safe. If I hadn't been living here long enough to know better, I'd have concluded from the warning that only a reckless, death-wish kind of traveller would ever consider a trip here.
   The advisory is admittedly more extreme than those from other countries, but not by much. Aided by Google Translate, I searched out travel warnings from governments in Germany, Holland, Canada, Britain and Spain, and found a similar alarmed tone running through all of them.
   The German government paints a picture of a country overrun by gangs, crazed drug-using criminals and feuding families, all with "low inhibitions in the use of firearms." Attacks on strangers have been especially notable on the route from San Pedro Sula to Copan Ruinas, notes the advisory, which also inexplicably cautions women travelling alone to be sure to have someone accompany them at security checkpoints.
   Holland concedes that it's still safe to travel to Honduras, but "not without being extra cautious." Tourists are targeted for theft and robbery because Hondurans "see foreigners as millionaires, who have too much money." The advisory lists the top tourist spots of Honduras - Tela, La Ceiba and Roatan - as dangerous for travellers.
   France cautions that bands of young, armed men target people, "even in groups," in low-traffic areas such as beaches. And watch out for the coast overall, where aggressive boaters, pirates and drug traffickers are waiting to get you.
   The Spanish government makes a rather sweeping statement about all public transportation in the cities being unsafe, and advises that it's best if either your family members or a hotel shuttle takes you to and from any airport. Man, that would break the hearts of the many decent, honest, hard-working taxi drivers I've ridden with in my time here.
    Spain recommends daylight road travel only and warns that organized gangs sometimes attack private vehicles. The government also gives some very specific warnings about certain city neighbourhoods and areas that are best to just skip entirely. Unfortunately for my acquaintances in the local tourism business, one of them is the Department of Copan.
   The Canadian government cautions travellers bound for any of the key tourism sites as well, and adds to the scare factor with a warning about people trying to drug your drinks or give you drug-tainted cigarettes or gum so they can rape you.
   "A large percentage of the population is armed," it adds. "Guns and weapons such as machetes are frequently used in robberies. Perpetrators often use violence if the person resists." (OK, you do want to pay attention to that last part  - you'd be crazy to resist if someone tries to rob you here.)

   Britain's advisory is the calmest of the bunch. Yes, Honduras has high levels of crime, it notes. However, "most serious crime doesn't affect tourists, but attacks on foreigners including armed robbery and sexual assaults do sometimes occur." Best to stay off the beaches at night. 

   I found Britain's comparatively mild-mannered warning the only one of the bunch that was fair to this maligned country that has been our home for the last year and a half. 

   Sure, there's probably at least one real-life story to back up each of the warnings in the other countries' travel advisories. Horrible things happen everywhere in the world. But putting together a string of one-offs in the absence of context is just plain irresponsible.

    I take particular exception to the U.S. State Department's declaration that "crimes are committed against expatriates at levels similar to those committed against locals." The statement is intended to convey that U.S. citizens aren't being targeted and that a traveller is at no more risk than the locals, but that is such a load of hooey. Honduras does indeed have a problem with violence, but overwhelmingly the victims are Honduran, at rates that can't even be compared to the occasional robbery or very rare murder of a foreigner. 

   What can I say? We live here. We work here. We travel around the country, and have even been known to hail cabs in the street. We exercise caution, but then again we always have - in our own country or any other. 

   Yes, there's crime in Honduras, and a murder rate that somebody had best get a handle on before the travel advisories get any more inflamed. But still and all, it's a lovely, gentle, beautiful country, full of good-hearted people who want nothing more than to hear that a visitor likes the place. 

   So take those warnings with a cup of salt and come on down. The country needs you. 

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.