The dark side of fair trade

Copan kids heading into the coffee fields at harvest time

When I stand in my Canadian shoes, I am an ardent supporter of fair trade – comercio justo as it’s known here in Honduras. Count me in for any practices that try to help small producers in under-developed countries make a decent living from their coffee crops and such.

But when I look at fair trade from the perspective of Hondurans, things get a little muddy. That’s especially true around the question of prohibiting child labour.

Taking steps to stop children from being forced to work to produce goods for the developed world is, understandably, one of the most fundamental principles of fair trade. Back home in Canada, I took pride in paying more for fair-trade coffee, believing that the extra cost was worth it if it ensured that some struggling family somewhere in the world earned a bit more for their coffee crop and didn't have to send their children into the field like tiny slaves.

But like I say, it all just gets a little less clear once you look at it from the Honduran perspective.

Beans, corn and coffee are easily the three most important crops for poor rural families in this part of Honduras, the west. The first two keep a family fed. The third – coffee – generates pretty much the only cash many of the families will see over the course of a year. Rural Hondurans are quite good at living a very nearly cash-free existence, but coffee is a treasured “money crop” because it pays for all the things that even resourceful Hondurans couldn't otherwise access -  like schooling, health care, shoes, laundry soap, electricity, purified water, transportation, household emergencies, vet care and animal feed, to name but a few.

In other words, coffee really matters. And fair trade really matters, too, because as always the producers are the ones who make the least money by the time coffee beans go from their fields to your cup at a high-end specialty café. I once crunched the numbers to get a sense of the difference, and it turns out that a nice cup of coffee at your favourite café sells for roughly 100 times the price that the producer got for the beans that went into that cup.

So yes, an organization that certifies producers to ensure they make more money in exchange for adhering to better agricultural and hiring practices – what’s not to like? But there’s the theory of fair trade, and then there’s the reality.

For instance, child labour. Given that more than 80 per cent of coffee producers in Honduras are small one-family operations, everybody in the family has to work when the harvest is on. And for the really poor families who don’t even own land, it’s even more important to hire the kids out to producers looking for extra hands during the harvest from October to February.

The public primary schools shut down for a two-month vacation in December-January specifically so children can work in the fields. When the coffee season is on, giant truckloads of children being driven off into the hills around Copan Ruinas or even to nearby Guatemala is a routine daily sight.

It’s child labour, there’s no doubt about that. In an ideal world, these kids would be in school rather than working. But it’s also the only way that a lot of Honduran families can make it through the year. For mothers with small children, taking their kids along for a day of picking coffee is often the only option if they don’t have anyone to look after the child while they work.

For these families, the well-intentioned fair trade prohibition against child labour looks very much like a threat, a risk to their livelihoods. If all the growers in Honduras actually stopped using child labour, the result would be disastrous for so many people. From a Honduran perspective, prohibiting child labour actually increases the risks for children.

Nor is the certification process easy, or cheap. Some of the small co-operatives have figured things out, but it would be difficult if not impossible for a small independent producer to get certified.

And yes, fair-trade beans fetch a higher price on the market for producers. But meeting the requirements for fair-trade or organic designation also means higher costs. Last year, a local fair-trade-certified coffee co-operative here in Copan also learned the hard way that buyers sometimes just declare they've got enough fair-trade product for now, leaving producers to sell on the regular market regardless of the extra time, work and money they've put in as certified growers.

What’s an ethically aware coffee drinker to do? I’d suggest buying from a local coffee-roasting company that purchases directly from growers in under-developed countries. I went along on a coffee tour earlier this year with an Australian couple who own Jasper Coffee in Melbourne, and I was really impressed at how much support they give the Copan producers who they've been buying from, and how much interest they take in their lives. That’s the kind of coffee company I’d like to support. (In Victoria, Level Ground looks like it might have those kinds of relationships.)

And please, continue appreciating the principles of fair trade, and the good work that the movement has done in under-developed countries. It’s just that like everything else in this world, doing the right thing is more complicated than just buying into a brand. 

Water's Edge: A short video of the beautiful Moskitia

    First morning back in Copan Ruinas after more than 2 weeks in the Moskitia. I'm happy to be home, but going through the 44 gigabytes of video footage I brought back from the region has certainly reminded me of how lucky I've been to be able to explore this gorgeous part of Honduras.
    I'll be making at least three short videos from the trip - one that highlights the projects in the region of my organization, the Comision de Accion Social Menonita, a second that ties into another CASM project to try to attract tourists and investors to the area, and this 5-minute glimpse of the region that I made this morning to share with my readers and Facebook friends. Hope it whets your appetite for more, because underneath all that astounding beauty there are a lot of problems that the region needs help with.
 

A wondrous place, a fragile future

   

Sunrise at Palacios

This place, this place. With each passing day I am astonished by its beauty a little more, and a little more worried for its future. What will ever become of the fabulous and vulnerable Moskitia?

    In another life, the Moskitia would be a world-renowned destination sought out by adventure travellers who crave that thing that’s so hard to find in this modern world of ours: An authentic experience. Whether the travel fantasy is vast stretches of empty Caribbean beaches, thriving indigenous cultures, or a world of lagoons, rivers and wildlife to explore, the Moskitia delivers. Monkeys, toucans, orchids, herons, fish dinners straight from the sea – all here.

    But this is not another life. And the overwhelming presence of narco-trafico in the region – while not nearly the danger to tourists that it is to those working directly in the business – pretty much guarantees that the Moskitia isn’t going to be seeing a lot of new travellers any time soon.

    The people who live in the Moskitia would love to see more tourists passing through. Jobs are hard to come by in this isolated and neglected region, and tourists boost the local economy in all kinds of ways – from the tours they take to the food they eat, the gas that powers their boats, the hospedajes and lodges they stay at while here, and the places they pass through on their way into the Moskitia.

    But the tiny toehold that the industry was just starting to get eight or nine years ago has ground to a halt under the weight of the 2009 coup in Honduras, a struggling global economy, increasingly dire travel warnings from the U.S., and the growing presence of serious-looking armed men in the cocaine business who don’t take kindly to outsiders.

    The Moskitia has always been a place for pirates. The state of Gracias a Dios, which encompasses the Moskitia, was practically made for illegal activity with its 16,600 square kilometres of waterways, hidey-holes and deep jungle. But cocaine trafficking is not just a few bad guys in eye patches stashing plundered booty, it’s a multi-million-dollar international business that is deeply integrated into life, government and policing systems in Central America.

Gulls and terns gather at the sandbar near Brus Laguna

    I visited Brus Laguna yesterday with my work mates, taking photos and videos for what is intended to be a promotional video that will spur tourism and investment in the Moskitia. Unfortunately, almost everyone we talked to in the little town was glum and worried, brought down by two murders this week, the murder of a couple and their young child a couple of weeks ago, and a rather horrendous shoot-em-up between rival drug traffickers a month or so ago that left 13 dead.

    Nobody’s killing tourists, of course. But that’s of little comfort to tour operators who are understandably nervous about bringing people into a situation that is well beyond their control. (Truthfully, well beyond anyone’s control.) One woman who was organizing tours in the region as part of a small Miskito collective cited two incidents last year that convinced the 11 families who had formed the collective to just pack it in.

    In the first incident, one of the small planes that brings the cocaine into Honduras from Colombia landed very close to where a group of travellers was staying. Nothing happened, but several of the travellers were very curious about the late-night landing and the small specks of light that appeared in the area after the plane came in.

    In the second incident, a tour guide was leading travellers through the jungle when suddenly a group of heavily armed men passed by. Pressed to come up with a quick answer as to who the armed men were, the tour guide told the group the men were guardabosques – forest conservation officers.

    That got everybody through a difficult moment. But fearing for the safety of future tour participants and of those working with the tour group - who would ultimately be blamed by those AK-47-toting “conservation officers” for bringing outsiders into the territory - the collective shut the tours down this year.

Miskito fishermen salt the day's catch, Brus Laguna

    My own travels here have been unadventurous, but for the countless sightings of super-powered boats carrying armed men zipping through the waterways of the Moskitia. But I have the benefit of being with my co-workers - all Hondurans and known in the area as staff of the Comision de Accion Social Menonita.

    My co-workers tell me if and when it’s safe to take photos and videos when we’re out and about, and I do what they say. I don’t scare easily, but even I don’t think a fair-skinned stranger toting a camera and stumbling solo into a place like Brus Laguna would be a good idea right now.

     The locals have been living with narco-trafico for many years now in the Moskitia, and they’ve all learned how to pretend not to see it, how to adjust their daily routines to avoid the dangerous hours of commerce and the high-risk areas.

    But how can you tell a tourist not to take photos because they could be putting their own lives or those of others at risk? How do you ensure they don’t wander into a situation that they’d be well-advised not to wander into? How do you keep everybody calm when – unlike the locals - they’re not at all used to the sight of armed and largely unfriendly men, or even the balaclava-wearing military doing boat patrols? And how does one convey to the narco-traficantes that this is just a garden-variety traveller wandering by, not an undercover DEA agent looking for trouble?

    Well, you can’t. That’s the essence of the problem in the Moskitia. So much beauty, so much potential risk. Now the Honduran government has signed an agreement with a British company to allow massive oil exploration in the region - a cause for concern in any fragile environment, but especially worrying in an ungovernable area under the management of a government that doesn't care to manage anything at the best of times. 

    I hope a day is coming when the people of this amazing region can put all of their troubles behind them and welcome the world. But at the moment, that day seems a very long way off.   

When cocaine is all there is

   Drugs are on my mind, as they often are these days. South American cocaine, to be more specific, 800 tons of which are reportedly moved north every year to eager markets in the U.S. and Canada. And the majority of it passes right through this region where I’m working at the moment - the Moskitia.

   Just before I left Copan Ruinas to come down here, I was telling an American friend about how I loved coming to this gorgeous place but at the same time always felt a bit on edge because of the enormous presence of The Business, as I've come to think of it. She was astounded that such a thing could be going on in plain sight without the military and Drug Enforcement Agency being all over it.

   But of course, that’s the thing about The Business in a country like Honduras (or anywhere, for that matter): It’s complicated.

   One of my co-workers here in the Moskitia was complaining this week about the tendency among people in the scattered, isolated villages around here to view the industry as an employer rather than a scourge.

   But in truth, it IS an employer, in a region that has damn few. It’s also a customer for the handful of hotel and restaurant services eaking out a meager existence, and probably even an emergency lender at the neighbourhood level for families in a jam.

   The Business owns real estate, legitimate businesses, tourist attractions, gas stations. When the notorious Los Cachiros cartel was busted last month, people in the cartel’s home town of Tocoa protested over the jobs that would be lost if authorities shut down the cartel’s many businesses, which include a very popular private zoo.

   Here in the Moskitia, who can blame anyone for getting in on some of the thriving business going on right in the ‘hood? The people are completely on their own here, ignored by their government and largely shunned by development organizations. They've got no electricity, no infrastructure, no money that would let them leave and no jobs that would help them stay. 

   If you were sitting in your crappy shack with your kids getting eaten alive by mosquitoes coming in through the holes where the windows would go if you had the money to buy any, what would you do? Those of us from drug-consuming countries like to frame the selling of drugs as a values issue, but it’s just another way to make a living in a place like this.

   A dangerous way to make a living, mind you: Narco-traficantes have a way of settling scores that leave women, children and countless young men dead, as two recent incidents in the Moskitia proved yet again. It’s a business with a terrible penchant for violence. The presence of the industry in Honduras is not benign, but I suspect it’s too well-integrated and perhaps even too essential to the country’s economy - and certainly to the economy of the Moskitia - for anyone to put a stop to it.
     Whatever the solution, it won’t involve sending armed troops into this fragile region to do battle with the “bad guys.” I don’t know if the lines were ever clear, but they certainly aren't anymore. 

If you can't bend, you'll snap

   

“Flexible and adaptable” is more or less the mantra for a Cuso International volunteer. My experiences yesterday brought that home to me yet again, for about the 254^th time.

    For reasons that I think have to do with building relationship, it has taken a very long time for the other regions of the organization I’m working for – the Comision de Accion Social Menonita (CASM) - to call on me for help with various communications issues. It seems that because the practice here is to hire people who you already know, or who someone else in the organization knows, it takes a long time for people to warm up to some random stranger who drops into the country with big ideas about how communications can be improved.

    At any rate, the regions didn't really start seeking me out until I’d been here for more than a year, and even then only when I showed up at some big CASM event and they could talk to me face to face. (That’s another thing I've learned: There’s a strong cultural preference for face-to-face communications regardless of how much access a person might have to technologies like Facebook and email – or even phone calls.) Paul and I have also been putting up our own money to be able to travel to the different regions and do work for other CASM offices, and at this point I've done five such visits.

    So by the time of the annual CASM retreat late last month, I was fairly well-known among the regions and newly popular because I’d made a 10-minute video for the Copan office. All 7 regions are hot for a video, which meant I’d soon gathered quite a crowd of CASM staffers around me asking when I could come to their region to do the same.

    The most urgent request was from CASM Colon, which works in the magnificent, isolated and challenging Moskitia region on the Caribbean coast. That team has some major communication needs coming up before the end of the year, and they urged me to come as soon as I could. I’m very fond of the region and the team, all of whom are the kind of passionate, enthusiastic, slightly crazy people you might expect to work in a difficult area like the Moskitia.

    I arranged to come for a week. I had other projects going on in Copan and one coming up in San Pedro Sula, so I had to do a fair bit of organization to get everything in line. I left Copan this past Sunday for the 9-hour bus ride to Tocoa, and lugged my backpack into the Colon office bright and early yesterday presuming that we’d be leaving first thing for the Moskitia, as it takes another 4 or 5 hours to get there.

    I knew it was going to be one of those “flexible and adaptable” days when I discovered upon arriving at the office that the co-worker who was to take me into the Moskitia was, in fact, still in the Moskitia. Nobody knew when he was returning. Nobody knew the plan, or even if there was one. I tried to phone him but couldn't get through, so eventually I just settled into other work and waited to see what would happen next.

    Mario arrived around 11 a.m. and said we’d be leaving for the Moskitia the next day. We agreed to meet at 1 p.m. to talk about the plan. I carried on with my work – the good thing about communications is that all the tools and work are right there inside your laptop – and practised my newly honed skills in patience and managing expectations.

     Of course, the meeting didn’t happen at 1 p.m., but sometime around 3 p.m. Mario and I got together and I learned that the expectation wasn’t that I’d stay for a one week, but two. Two and a half, really, by the time I got back to Tocoa and eventually, Copan.

    I hadn't packed or prepared for that much time away, or organized my life back home for a long absence. But what can you do? I learned some time ago that throwing tempestuous little fits about not being informed about anything gets you absolutely nowhere here. I could have stomped out and caught the first bus back to Copan, but that would have meant leaving the CASM team in the lurch when they really needed me – and after months and months of effort to convince them that they needed me.

    And in truth, Mario wasn't treating me any differently than any other member of the team by springing that surprise news on me. The crazy lack of planning, organization and keeping people in the loop is just how they do things here. “Flexible and adaptable,” I muttered to myself, then smiled at Mario and said, “Sure!”

    So here I go, off to the Moskitia. We’re actually leaving tomorrow now, the date having been rejigged to accommodate other work the office needed from me before I leave. Part of me is still a little ruffled about the whole thing, but another part is excited to have such a grand opportunity to explore a part of the country that even most Hondurans never get to see. This will be my third trip into the Moskitia this year, and the most extensive one in terms of the travel – all by boat – we’ll be doing while there.

    If you’re someone who likes to know the plan ahead of time, forget this work. I've always thought of myself as someone who goes with the flow, but my Honduran experiences have tested me time and again. and revealed to me just how much I appreciate an organized, thoughtful and well-planned approach to work projects.
     But I figure that years from now, what I’ll remember from this time will be the adventures in the Moskitia, not how Mario just presumed I could adjust my schedule on a dime to adapt to his plans. Onward into the endlessly surprising future, flexible and adaptable all the way. 

A dog's life in Copan: Would they have it any other way?

   

Beagley, probably my favourite (but don't tell the others)

I grow fonder of free-range dog culture with each passing day. Dogs are so much more civilized and resourceful than I would have expected when left to their own devices, and I love seeing how they organize their world when it's all up to them. 

    Whether stray or owned, the majority of Copan Ruinas dogs roam the streets as free agents. Unlike the highly regulated dog environment of Victoria, these dogs live largely without human interference. There is no dog catcher, no local SPCA, no enforcement of things like leash use, park access, poo pickup and random canine wandering. It's a dog's world down here.

    They organize their territories through rules I can't decipher, but which have the effect of keeping fights to a minimum. They are never aggressive to humans, even though some have every right to be given how they're treated. Some travel great distances in their daily rounds. Others stick quite close to home, whether that’s a real home or just the neighbourhood a particular dog frequents.

    Having served up a whole lot of dog food and ear scratches to a parade of canine passers-by since we arrived here, I've gotten to know something about them. It seems to me that the majority love their freedom. But they also crave affection from people, not to mention rely on them for food. Perhaps that’s why they’re the coolest dogs I've ever met – independent by necessity but at the same time sweet and friendly. Food brings them running in a heartbeat, but even the skinniest ones will pause in their eating to relish the feeling of someone reaching down to pet them. 

    I could tell you a couple of dozen sad stories by now of bad things that happen to dogs here,

Crazy Pup in her favourite hidey-hole under our bed

including the municipality’s quiet poisoning of dogs in the town centre. Last week I lifted a heavy chain from the neck of a sick, scabby little dog that had miraculously managed to escape imminent death tied up and forgotten somewhere without food or water, and thought again of how unbelievably cruel life can be for dogs here.

    But I suppose that’s the price of freedom. The dogs of Victoria lead such well-fed, comfortable lives by comparison. But they can’t wander downtown and scrounge chicken bones from a tourist. They can’t squeeze under a barbed-wire fence and chase cows. Having your own big bed and steady food source inside a nice Oak Bay house is one way to live, but Copan dogs know the pleasure of another way.

    As I write this, the neighbour’s small dog – pregnant with her second litter this year – is lying at one end of the kitchen table. At the other is a charming street dog we call Beagley. She has just arrived home with a big cut across her nose, perhaps from barbed wire. (A woman who I talk dogs with mentioned the other day how great it would be to mount a web cam on Copan dogs and unravel some of the mysteries of their adventurous lives.)

A stormy night brings 3 indoors.

    Beagley and the pregnant Coquetta are regulars, but at least another 3 or 4 dogs come by our place every day for food. Most have owners, but few seem to get enough to eat (or drink) regardless. We lost two regulars in the latest round of municipal poisonings, in which poisoned meat and milk are set out in the early-morning hours to claim the life of any dog that happens by.

   There’s something sad in how excited the local dogs get at the prospect of dog food and a bowl of water, but I love that they come around. My father always used to say that he’d never met a dog he didn't like, and I’m the same way. I found it odd during our holiday back to Canada last month when I could no longer pet passing dogs; their owners would inevitably yard them away from me with a firm pull on the leash. But there’s no denying that the dogs back home looked way healthier than any Honduran dog.

     Our visitors are going through about 25 pounds of dog food every month now, and some get flea treatments, worm medications, and even temporary birth control (an injection twice a year) if they've really worked their way into our lives. It’s not cheap on a volunteer stipend, but it’s worth it for all the lovely new friends.

    At times Paul and I talk about bringing one of the dogs back to Canada with us. I bet Beagley would love her own dog bed, not to mention biscuits and a greatly reduced chance of getting pregnant. But I've also seen her roaming happily around Copan’s downtown park, clawing bits of food waste out of garbage cans and hanging out with her many friends. I know how she loves her nights on the town, and visiting the houses of all the other gringas who she has charmed.

    Would Beagley willingly give up freedom for certainty? I just don’t know. 

Sometimes when they touch, it's all a bit too much

   

I would expect some pretty big fallout if someone in a Canadian workplace routinely called a co-worker “Fatty.” Or nicknamed them Chino because they had a bit of an Asian look to their features.

    But for the most part, such things don’t seem to rile the average Honduran. I mentioned to one of my co-workers this week that if she ever came to Canada, it was probably best not to call anybody “Fatty” – Gordito – as she had just done while summoning a chubby co-worker. She and the so-called Gordito both looked surprised to hear that such a nickname could be construed as offensive. Gordito himself noted that sure, a nickname like that might cause offence if said the wrong way. But if said in a friendly voice – hey, what was the big deal?

    It got me thinking yet again about cultural differences. A good part of what I see around me in the workplace would be interpreted as harassment in Canada, or at least as “unacceptable practices.” Yet if the other party not only tolerates it but appears to be perfectly relaxed and happy with whatever is being said or done, what then?

    The Hondurans I've met don’t seem to have the same sensitivity around body image that so many North Americans do, which perhaps explains why rather blunt comments related to their appearance don’t seem to rile them. I sense that they accept themselves as they are much more readily, and don't have the crazy thinking patterns so common in my land that if you could only change your physical appearance, everything about your life would be better. 

    So while I quietly wish they'd quit calling each other Fatty, Skinny, Liar and other impolite nicknames, who is it that actually has the problem if I’m the only one taking offence? I've drawn the line at using such nicknames myself, of course, but I'm also trying to stop taking offence on someone's behalf every time I hear such things, given that they show no signs of being offended themselves.

    Then there’s the kind of touching that goes on in the workplace, which is way beyond a modern-day Canadian’s tolerance level. I’ve seen my co-workers – single and married alike - give each other back rubs, lay a hand on each other’s thighs, even cuddle up beside each other on a bed.

    Sometimes we’ll be in the middle of a meeting and one person will come up behind a co-worker and wrap their arms snugly around the person’s waist. The two of them might stay that way for 10 or 15 minutes of the meeting. And we're not talking about a licentious group of people here; my co-workers are deeply religious.

    More than a year and a half on, I’m still quite freaked out by the intimate touching that goes on in broad daylight by people who work together. But I've come to see by the calm and welcoming expressions of the people being touched that in fact, the problem is mine. Nobody but me seems to be troubled by any of it (although I suspect spouses might object were they to show up at work unexpectedly and catch an on-the-job cuddle in progress). And no one is touching me, given that I'm much older than any of them and emitting a prickly don't-even-think-about-it energy.

    I don’t doubt that such touching begets sexual harassment, a concept that my Honduran co-workers are not yet familiar with. I’m sure there are Honduran bosses out there who are taking much advantage of the practice of intimate touch in the workplace, and unhappy employees whose faces are not showing the same calm acceptance that I see among my own cuddly co-workers.

    But perhaps that's a conversation for another day here in Honduras. My co-workers, male and female alike, look at me like I’m some old prude on the rare occasions when I mention that people sure do touch each other a lot more intimately in the workplace than we do back in my land, and call each other rather cruel names that could get you slapped with a harassment suit in a heartbeat in a lot of Canadian workplaces. The people I work with truly see nothing inappropriate in what they’re doing. 

    Chalk it up to cultural differences. I envy Hondurans for being comfortable enough in their own skins that being called Fatty doesn't rile them, but I do wonder where all that workplace touching will lead. Give me a clear no-touch policy any day.  

Worry: There's no escape

   

Long, slow drives to distant communities are opportunities for interesting conversations with my co-workers, as there’s often just me and one of the guys in the truck. We've talked about workers’ rights, Canadian salaries, time management, trades training, attitudes toward homosexuality – you name it.

    “Why do so many people in Canada and the U.S. use drugs?” asked a co-worker last week during one such conversation. Hoo-boy, I thought to myself. Tough question.

    Making a living in the illegal-drug business is something a significant number of Hondurans are intimately familiar with, but there’s not much of a culture (yet) of using drugs and alcohol. Could be the lack of money, could be the Christianity. But it also strikes me that Hondurans just don’t have the drive to experience an altered state in the same way that those of us from privileged countries do.

    I speculated that people in my country just seemed a little more anxious and stressed-out about things, and that they use drugs and alcohol to take the edge off. I think my co-worker was a bit baffled by the idea that people would feel anxious even when they've got 10 times the resources and options that a typical Honduran has. We got to talking about whether there’s a certain amount of worry that people need in their lives.

    If you’re a typical Honduran, you might fill your worry quotient with fears about growing enough food for the off-season, paying your child’s school tuition next month, getting that festering wound on your leg looked at even though you have no money for medical care or transport to the clinic. You’d worry about your day-to-day job, being extorted by thugs on your morning bus ride, how to keep your teenage son from getting killed by the narco-traficantes he has taken up with.

    Few people from a country like mine have those kind of problems. But they might be worrying about where their life’s going, or whether they should quit their job. They wonder if their spouse still loves them. If they've got enough money for retirement. If they're living life to the max. If their children are happy.

    So we're all worrying, but about very different things. Managing problems through drugs and alcohol isn solution for any kind of worry, but I would think that it’s a lot better of a fit with anxiety-type worries in a middle-class country than it is with basic issues of survival. There’s just no margin for error when you live as close to the edge as so many Hondurans do.

    A middle-class Canadian misusing drugs or alcohol will eventually pay the price by way of risking their job, family, hard-earned savings and self-respect, but most of us could go years and years before anything bad actually happened. A campesino who takes up alcohol as a way out of his farming troubles puts his life and that of his family at immediate risk.

    Would my co-worker understand the developed world’s healthy appetite for drugs and alcohol if I told all of this to him? I don’t think I have the words to explain middle-class angst and anxiety to people who have never had the luxury of getting past survival. 

    I don’t know whether my co-worker feels heartened to learn that even when people have the life he wishes he had, they still have things that weigh heavily on their minds. But so it goes. And so the drugs move from south to north, adding a few more worries at both ends as they pass through. 

Microorganismo de Montana: The Movie

    Oh, we talk a lot about the importance of organic agriculture back home, but would we climb up a 75-degree slope into a beautiful but buggy mountain forest and dig around in the dead leaves for a couple of hours looking for flecks of white fungus?
    That's how a couple of my favourite Copan coffee producers passed a big part of their day last week, collecting the microorganismo de montana that is used by organic growers in Honduras to make a special fertilizer known for helping plants of all kinds arm themselves against diseases and infestations.
    The fruits of the men's labour are now tucked away tightly in a 45-gallon barrel. The microorganisms will be dining on molasses and rice semolina for the next 15 days, and multiplying like crazy in an anaerobic environment.
    When the mix is uncapped later this month, the result will be a barrelful of natural microorganisms ready to enrich the soil around the producers' coffee plants. That kind of preventive care is always important, but it's critical right now as the producers head into the second of three tough years of losses due to a persistent coffee fungus (the infected plants are either having to be cut back almost to the soil or torn out and the land replanted, either of which results in three years without a coffee crop as the fincas are rebuilt.
    Here's my video of that day that explains how it's done. I've made versions in English and Spanish - clic aqui para la version espanol.
    

If PEERS was a person, I guess I'd call this love

Find the newsletter at http://www.peers.
bc.ca/images/PEERS_Newsletter_0913.pdf

   

    I can’t think of many former employers that I would happily continue to work for without pay. But PEERS Victoria is clearly one of them, seeing as it’s been six years since I finished my time there as executive director and yet I still threw my hand up with genuine enthusiasm last month when asked to put together PEERS’ latest newsletter.

   What is it about the place that has caused this permanent attachment? 

    Part of it is the passion I feel for doing something that gets us thinking about how we judge and marginalize sex workers. Another big part is the amazing, resilient and loving people I have met over the years because of my association with PEERS and sex work – both the people come for services and those who come to work or volunteer there. A lot of us appear to be bonded to the place for life.

   But the other thing that ties me to PEERS is that after spending three years observing its grassroots model in action, I’m a believer. PEERS was created by and for sex workers, and in its best moments it is capable of amazing work. When things are going right at PEERS, you really feel the power of grassroots action to change lives.

   Things are not exactly going right at PEERS in this moment, unfortunately. The great staff and volunteers are still there – many of them the same ones I worked with during my time at PEERS – but the resources to run the place aren’t. (Read an earlier blog of mine here to understand more about how the current financial situation came about.)

   PEERS has had to give up its daytime drop-in, its group programs, and all the many community connections that have grown out of that vital work. Outreach services continue, and that’s a very good thing, but the drop-in and group programs were the all-important next steps for many outreach clients.

   Harm-reduction and referral services directly on Victoria’s stroll are obviously very important for the vulnerable, street-entrenched women who are frequent PEERS clients. But to no longer have the next step – the services that support people who need outreach first but then are ready for bigger changes in their lives – well, that’s a cruel folly.

   To no longer have one safe, judgment-free place where sex workers can go, in whatever shape they are in on a particular day, gives the lie to all that hand-wringing we did after the Pickton trial revealed just how complicit we all are in creating the conditions for murder.

   Vast sums were spent on Pickton’s prosecution and an inquiry into those horrible, shameful years in B.C. - $102 million on the trial, almost $8 million on the inquiry. For that kind of money, PEERS Victoria could run its day programs and drop-in for the next 366 years. And what did all that spending result in for the province’s sex workers? Fewer services. PEERS Vancouver closed last year, and PEERS Victoria is struggling to hold on. As they go, nobody else is stepping up to do this specialized type of work. (The 2012 inquiry is titled "Forsaken." Fitting.)

   I hope you’ll check out the newsletter, and consider passing it on to others who might want to know more about this situation or have ideas for new funding sources for PEERS Victoria.

   About $300,000 a year would restart the drop-in and day programs. On the one hand, that’s not much. On the other, that’s way beyond bake sales and car washes. While individual donations are always welcome at PEERS, what I’m wishing for is that someone within government who cares about the issue will step up quietly to guide the way to a good funding fit. Somebody out there knows where there’s money for this important work.

   Running PEERS was the toughest job I’ve ever had, and there were lots of times when I’d be  crying in the car on the way home. That was definitely a first for me. But there were many moments of something akin to bliss, too, where I would look around at all these caring people trying to pull each other through and just see all the love and optimism in that work.

   What a pleasure it has been to stay connected with so many of my PEERS friends for nine years now, and to see the tremendous changes they have brought about in their own lives and those of others who they’ve since reached out to. And I’m very happy that the PEERS gang still thinks of me when a newsletter needs doing, because that tells me that the bond goes both ways.

   Please keep the buzz going about this issue. Keep the media comments and the emails circulating. May the office phones of our MLAs and MPs ring incessantly with demands to do something about this unacceptable loss of services.

Stumbling into a micro-organismatic adventure

 

  There are days when the frustrations of a new work culture pile up on me. And then there are days like the one I had this week, when it’s all just a total blast.

    The occasion was a workshop in a neighbouring community to demonstrate how to make two kinds of organic fertilizers. I like the hands-on workshops anyway – always interesting, loads of picture-taking opportunities – but looked forward to this one in particular because a couple of campesinos I always enjoy talking with were going to be there.

    Workshop days virtually always start with having to load heavy things into the truck and then drive around looking for some piece of equipment or fertilizer ingredient that we don’t have. The slow starts used to drive me crazy, but as time passes I've grown to like them. Instead of sitting tensely in the truck waiting for my workmate to return from his or her chores, I do a little wandering, maybe shoot a little video (my current obsession).

    Eventually, off we go, in this case to the house in Sesesmil II where the workshop was going to take place. But before we could get started, the two coffee producers who I really like had to hike into the woods to gather two sacks of a naturally occurring microbe known here as microorganismo de montaña. My co-worker suggested I go with the men – Don Candelario Hernandez and Don Alfredo Morales - in order to get video of the process.

    We’re going way up there, Don Alfredo told me, pointing high into the hills. I laughed, thinking he was joking. He wasn't.

    Within minutes of starting out, I regretted my choice of shoes that day: Sandals, although at least they had some grip. I would later come to regret my lack of insect repellent as well, and my folly at bringing my purse along. It swung jauntily on my shoulder as I slogged through creeks, over slippery rock and mud, then up what had to be a 75-degree, heavily forested slope.

    I slid, slipped and fell several times on the side of that mountain. Fortunately, it was slow-motion falling that left plenty of time for grabbing a branch on the way past, and I appreciated that the men I was with just acted like my tumbles were part of the adventure. By the time we got back to the house a couple of hours later, my purse and I were covered in mud, I was nursing a bruised hip, and my cute little sandals were caked in dirt and bits of dead leaf.

    This is not to suggest that I was unhappy with any of that, however. Even after a year and a half of doing this work, it’s still a treat to be able to head into the lush Honduran hills with people who know their way around. I marvel at their machete magic, at the way they fashion a glass out of a big leaf to scoop up creek water for a drink. Scrambling up a crazy incline to dig under rotting leaves for pockets of a mysterious microorganism would not be an invitation I’d jump at, but maybe that’s why I like my work adventures so much: I end up doing things I’d never have done otherwise.

    And how cool is it to watch these guys collecting this microorganism (picture bits of white fungus-like stuff, which in nature helps rot dead leaves) and thinking that I just might be enjoying the benefits of their work one day while sipping my morning cup of coffee? I come from a land where there’s a lot of talk about organic processes, of getting back to the land and doing things the natural way. But these guys are living it.

    Want to try your own microorganism fertilizer? Here’s the recipe, presuming you have access to a tropical forested mountain to get started: Two sacks of microorganism de montaña; 1 quintal (45 kilos) of rice semolina; and 4 litres of molasses diluted in enough water to ensure the mix ends up uniformly damp but not wet. Pack it all into a big barrel – pounding it down as you go to remove air – and seal it tight for 15 to 20 days. Dilute a half a kilo of the mix in 15 litres of water for a fine organic foliar spray.

    But of course, the fun all happens on the side of the mountain. Video to follow. 

Dwindling services for sex workers tells grim story in the post-Pickton years

It's very nearly nine years to the day since I jumped out of my comfortable life as a journalist and took up a job heading a small grassroots organization for sex workers. Many things have changed since then, but PEERS Victoria is never far from my heart no matter what else is going on for me.
   I could write a book about the things that astonished me, informed me and bowled me over in those three years as executive director of PEERS. There was so much to learn, not the least of which was how to live with an unwieldy new performance-based contract with the province that had replaced the core funding that PEERS had received up to that point.
    The third generation of that contract is what has turned out to be PEERS' undoing. The organization announced this week that it just can't make a go of it anymore in its contract with the Ministry of Social Development, and is having to give up its daytime drop-in and its daily groups for sex workers seeking change in their lives.
    A sad development, yes. A terrible thing to happen for vulnerable, stigmatized people who often won't access other services because they're afraid of being judged. But as one of the many people who have tried to make various forms of that blasted provincial contract work over the past decade, the only thing that surprises me about this turn of events is that PEERS actually managed to make the contract work for as long as it did.
    In its first manifestation, during my time at PEERS, the contract was extremely difficult but still possible, especially given that the contract manager on the government side was willing to trust the organization and put a little stretch in the rules to accommodate the vast number of barriers that sex workers are facing when they first walk through the doors at PEERS.
     But my creativity was still tested to the max trying to make that contract work, because it was based on PEERS running a pre-employment training program when the reality was that the people we were working with were still trying to struggle out of serious addictions, critical mental-health issues, poverty, housing problems and violence. Under the contract, we had six months to get those people ship-shape and either into the "square" job market, taking further job training at another agency, or attending college or university. That simply wasn't possible.
    Still, we did manage to squeeze enough money out of the contract to offer a pretty good program. But in the second- and third generations of the contract, which came along after I left, the money got tougher and tougher to access for PEERS, and for any of the non-profits serving people with complex and multiple barriers.
    This last contract iteration, which came into effect in the spring of 2012, is a fee-for-service model that doesn't pay for anything unless it can be delivered as a billable service. So any interaction with clients either had to be reinterpreted as a billable service - a terrible fit with a peer-led organization that knows a slow and gradual approach is the only thing that works - or go unfunded. The contract also has complicated and heavy reporting requirements that eat up much (unfunded) administrative time.
     It pays poorly to boot, and required for the first time that PEERS give up being a direct provider and instead become a sub-contractor. That change has prohibited PEERS from having contact with government contract managers or doing any lobbying about the problems of the contract.
    Like I say, it was only a matter of time until everything went sideways. And now it has. Fortunately, PEERS continues to have other funding for its day and night outreach services, but the drop-in space that was such a vital support t is gone. So are the daytime programs, which not only served to help clients start working through their many challenges but also as a de facto detox for people who desperately needed a structured environment to be able to stop using drugs and alcohol.
    And so it's a sad day. One more service gone for marginalized, vulnerable people trying to get their lives together. One more service gone for sex workers, who have already lost PEERS Vancouver and other sex-worker-specific supports as a result of the provincial and federal governments' continuing withdrawal from community social services.
    PEERS will survive, of course. It always does. This time returning to its roots as an outreach service might even be good in a way. But who could have imagined in the hysteria of the Pickton trial just seven years ago that where it would take us would be to a time with even fewer services for sex workers? Who could imagine that not only would we ignore the recommendations of the Pickton inquiry, we would retreat even further from doing anything helpful for the women we seemingly only care about when they turn up dead?
   The following are just a few of the reactions from PEERS clients after learning that the drop-in and Elements are gone. And if there's anything you can do to change any of this, please do.
 
From the clients: 

The first few weeks at PEERS I was a closed-off and very detached person. I would freeze with anxiety just from being around people. As time went on I felt more and more safe and started to wake up every morning excited to go to class. I made friends. My life today is so much better and I have my children back and am free from drugs.

*********

When I learned the program was closing, at first I was in shock, then a little disturbed and upset and worried and wondering what I was going to do to keep myself in routine. Worried that my depression will set in without having some routine and friendship I have through PEERS. This is one of the best programs I have ever been to – and I have been to a lot. This program is a form of treatment that works!!!

*********

I am a person with mental illness. I am on permanent disability. PEERS is the only program that I actually fit in and am accepted in, as quirky and different as I am. I do not use drugs or really party. PEERS helps me find me. It also helps me learn. These are some things that I have personally learned at PEERS: Treat people the way you want to be treated; any behaviours that I have that need to be changed to better myself and I don’t change are insane behaviours. They taught me respect of myself and others. I learned communication skills and skills to express my feelings. I also learn about patterns and what I can do to change them. Identifying our problems is the key that allows us to change.

With [Elements] closing, how can I learn to change and grow when I do not fit in any other program? PEERS is a unique program that turns no one away, even when no one else wants you. These staff members are special and unique and deal with many people on a broad spectrum of issues, most having mental health issues.

********

Every time I have come [to this program] since before it has been closing, I been really sad. I feel different about PEERS. Also it was a good place to vent. It helped me with problems and finished my probation order to come here. I really sad that I won’t be able to come here for the great food and company. Plus it help me get my Wal-Mart cards to get food at the end of the month. Please think about not closing the Elements program.

********

I am [age removed to protect anonymity] years old and am strong and healthy. I have PEERS to thank for that. Three years ago ago as a vulnerable escort, I was a victim of domestic abuse, sexual violence and was doing sex work 70 hours a week. I was broken. Sent from Victim Services, I made an intake appointment to begin attending PEERS. I was so nervous, I was afraid of being judged. Then I met Sarah. She was the counsellor and intake worker. She was very comforting and reassuring. I applied for Elements. I was told it was a program to support me while I was in the sex trade as well as help me transition out of it. I was reassured that the women were very welcoming and that everything shared in Elements was confidential.

    The Elements program changed my life! Meeting other woman who had quit working in the sex trade really motivated me. The structure of coming to classes really helped me. Through work sheets, check-in and counsellor-led classes, I worked through my trauma and addiction. I found the group setting really helped me feel a part of something. Hearing women’s stories that were similar to mine, I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew my feelings were normal. Us girls in Elements became like a family. We consoled while maintaining healthy boundaries. PEERS taught me boundaries.

    In the past, I had been through lots of therapy. I found I didn’t get the same kind of healing. I couldn’t open up the same as being at PEERS. At PEERS, like the name, everyone is a peer. I knew that the counsellors and other women, clients or staff had “been there, done that.” It was the first time ever I had felt understood.

    PEERS helped me to recover from my post-traumatic stress disorder. The counsellors helped me work it out and walked me through the court process. They also came with me to court. When I was afraid to leave my home, a counsellor transported me to and from PEERS to keep me safe.

    PEERS not only helped me with my emotional needs, but also my physical. I was taught safety precautions to keep me free from STDs and unsafe clients. They provided me with a “black list” of all dangerous clients to avoid. They also provided me with a female doctor. Dr. Cunningham made STD tests and other checkups comfortable and thorough. She never rushed me, and I felt safe in the comfort of PEERS.

    PEERS always provided basic needs – a nutritious hot meal daily and when I didn’t have groceries or the money to buy them, PEERS would send me home with a care package.

    Some of my fondest memories are of Beauty Day. I always looked forward to Friday, Beauty Day. We girls were pampered, making us feel beautiful and helping our self-esteem. We would receive haircuts, manicures and massages. All of these were done by professionals. I was also welcome to help myself to the clothing room. To this day, most of my closet consists of clothing from that clothing room.

    Today I think of all the skills and abilities I have learned and taken from PEERS, and they help me each day. At PEERS I attended poetry classes, where my poems were published in two books. It helped my self-esteem enormously. I also learned yoga and knitting, which will help me for the rest of my life. They help me get through the tough times.

    To whoever reads this, I hope you have a better understanding of the importance of PEERS. PEERS has saved my life. I am distraught that my safe haven is being taken from me. I need PEERS. The love, support, safety and resource is a necessity for Victoria.

On the road again: Scenes from a car window

 

I've been searching for a way to describe the swervy, teeth-rattling experience of travelling on a typical rural road in Honduras, but it's one of those things that you really have to feel for yourself.
    But yesterday on the drive back from Las Flores, where my co-workers did a workshop on making organic fertilizer, it dawned on me that if I just stuck the video camera out the window, I might be able to convey at least some of the experience. The jouncing, the sharp turns, the speed bumps as we pass through little towns - a hand-held video shot catches all of that.
     So click here for a five-minute video snapshot of that 45-minute ride back toward Copan Ruinas, starting with the crazy drive right through the flood plain of the Rio Negro - which, of course, is impassable anytime the rains are heavy.
    As I watched the video, I also saw that it serves the purpose of getting past the pretty pictures I've been posting and showing a little grittier, realistic view of this country where we've been living for the past year and a half. Hope you like it. 

We can sing a rainbow

 

 I'm in that giddy state that comes after something you've been dreading is over, and it turned out not nearly as bad as you'd thought. In this case the anxiety-inducing event was a devotional I did this morning for my co-workers on gay tolerance - a subject that is rarely talked about here, and most definitely not in the context of the weekly prayer meeting at our office.
   But for a while now I've been thinking that my co-workers are splendid, loving people, and that perhaps they really just needed a gentle push to reconsider some of the kneejerk prejudices against homosexuality that exist in Honduras. I knew I couldn't go at them with a forceful presentation on how wrong it is to deny people the basic right of loving who they choose, but I figured I might be able to just plant a seed or two that might start them thinking differently.
   As it turned out, several of them had already been thinking differently. And while I noticed some people shifting uncomfortably in their seats once they heard what the subject of the devotional was, the lively conversation that grew out of the little PowerPoint I did went on for almost two hours and had everybody talking and sharing their thoughts. There was a lot of laughter, too, a great relief for a presenter bracing herself for stony faces and silence.
   Honduras is heavily religious - still predominantly Catholic, but increasingly evangelical. My co-workers tend to interpret the Bible very conservatively, and there are at least a couple passages in the Bible that are pretty ferocious when it comes to condemning same-sex relations.
   So while the Pope's recent comments about accepting homosexuals has given Honduras something to think about, it's not like people who have spent a lifetime believing that homosexuality is an abomination can just switch off their feelings and move on. I tried to make my points gently, and stressed from the start that I wasn't there to argue with them about their own beliefs (although by gully, that turned out to be quite a challenge at times).
   The best discussion came when I broke them into pairs and gave them five "moral dilemmas" to ponder:

• Your son/daughter or other close family member acknowledges being gay; 
• You discover your child's favourite teacher is a lesbian; 
• You become aware that children are bullying a boy because they think he's gay; 
• Your organization finds out that two people in a community are being blocked from participating in a project because neighbours think they are homosexual; 
• It's election day and you have the choice of voting for an honest candidate who's gay or a corrupt politician who's heterosexual. (That last one got quite a laugh, seeing as it's basically a real-life example from the coming Honduran election.)

    Those around the table who struggle the most with accepting homosexuality had the same kind of responses you can still hear in Canada and the U.S.: The Bible says it's a sin and that's that; the homosexuals want to influence my child's sexual orientation; we ought to have the right to our own beliefs even if thinking is changing elsewhere in the world. It's OK to be gay, just don't act on it.
    But even the diehards admitted they'd never push a loved one away, never stand by and watch intolerance or violence happen to someone. One fellow, given the "what if it was someone in your family" dilemma, said he realized he wasn't at all prepared for such a development, and saw that he needed to reflect on that more.
   Others were downright supportive. One young woman said she'd met a rural family with three gay children, and realized in that instant that it had to be in the biology of people. Several talked about the woman who dresses as a man in one of the villages up the road from our office (and believe me, you have to be some brave in Honduras to do that) who has a female partner and has been completely accepted by the other villagers. One said she'd learned a lot from witnessing that acceptance.
   And I think we almost had a consensus that if the better political candidate was gay or lesbian, he or she would get their vote.
    I'm well aware of how ugly the talk can get when the subject is tolerance of homosexuality; my years as an adult have pretty much paralleled the decades of heated debates over gay rights. But ultimately, I trust good-hearted people to see that it's just love we're talking about here. My Honduran co-workers are nothing if not loving, and I am honoured that they gave me the opportunity to say things they didn't want to hear. 

Come walk with me

 

The ever-changing field near the river.

 I have a 15-minute walk to work every morning. Today's was particularly interesting, what with me stepping out the door and immediately getting into a discussion with a neighbour about the swollen vulva of the wandering young dog sleeping on our patio, which he told me meant she was in heat and thus in need of one of the mystery injections they give dogs down here to stop pregnancy. But every day's walk is interesting in its own way.
    I make a point to say good morning to everyone I pass, having come to see that gringos are in general not nearly friendly enough for this extroverted and amiable culture. Shop owners getting ready for the day, women out sweeping the street outside their houses, cantina workers, street drunks - all of us exchange greetings, and at times get into spirited conversations about one thing or another.
    I walk the dirt road below our house, a favourite haunt of the handful of local men who drink themselves into oblivion at least a couple times a week. They're always in one of two states: Cheerily intoxicated or stone-cold passed out on the ground, looking for all the world like they're dead. One time I stood over a fellow for a long time trying to verify that he was breathing, but he was.
    The dirt road gives way to Cantina Row at the edge of town, where the sex workers pass their time in teeny-tiny bars dancing and flirting with drunk men. There appears to be some irregularly enforced rule about the cantinas not being allowed to open until 4 p.m., and today I noticed that one of the women has opened a small pulperia - a corner store - in her little house next to the bar where she works, perhaps to generate some daytime revenue.

Egel, the dog that walks to work with me a lot

    The highway between Copan Ruinas and the Guatemala border takes a strange swing right through this area, so there's one part of my walk where I'm often fighting for road space with semi-trucks trying to make a near-impossible 90-degree turn. If I'm walking with the neighbour dog that often accompanies me, I know he'll inevitably detour into one of the tire shops along that part of the road, where he will perform a ritual with the big husky-cross tied up there that involves the two of them standing side-by-side and looking like they're going to fight, although they never do. Giant semi trucks carrying vast flats of  Coca-Cola products are always unloading at a warehouse in this area; whoever else might be struggling in Honduras, Coca-Cola is not one of them.
    Then it's on to another dirt road, this one past the Hedman Alas bus station and the newly opened hotel that never looks very busy. The previous owner was murdered and the place was closed down when we arrived, but it's back in business under new ownership and trying its best in difficult times. Just past the hotel there's a field that has an ever-changing array of vegetables growing in it - beans for a couple months, then chili peppers, then corn. Today the workers were assembling little tents over the newly tilled field that producers use here to keep away bugs, so I'm guessing that tomatoes will be the next crop.
    The people I run into the most in this stretch of the walk are Maya Chorti, who are distinct among Hondurans for their brightly coloured homemade clothes, their slim builds, and their reserve. Sometimes I really have to work at it to catch somebody's eye for a greeting. I sense they don't have much time for gringos, especially those who aren't buying their corn-husk dolls. Some will have walked for two hours or more by the time we pass on the bridge across the Copan River, as they're all making their way on foot from some hillside village to town to sell their various wares: chickens; eggs; tortillas; local fruits.
    Every day I pass at least one stooped old man with a load of firewood on his back. It looks like the hardest work imaginable, and it always seems to be the oldest, most infirm looking men who end up doing it. I guess there's no other work for them, and certainly no comfortable retirement pensions.

Oh, the things you see when you look

   The final hill to my office takes me past some of the richer homes of the area, including one surrounded by a rock wall so high and huge that last year a team of 20 men worked on it every day for almost 10 months. We grew familiar with each other after 10 months of daily "Buenas dias," and now we say hello when I see them at other work sites around town.
  And then I arrive, to my desk in what was probably a garage at some point, where the big door is wide open and it's practically like I'm working outside. Today I hear the sound of saws; one of the wealthy people down below must be getting a new or improved house. Later this afternoon, I expect I'll hear the music and drums of a school band practising in some distant field, as Independence Day is coming up in less than a month and there will be many, many marching bands in the streets.
    Come Monday, I'll do it all over again, and it will be the same but different. If life is in the details, I am living.
    

Back home to the happy faces and sad stories

 

 
   My heart is breaking for neighbours of ours here in Copan Ruinas, whose teenage son was kidnapped 21 days ago while Paul and I were holidaying in Canada and the U.S. The family has yet to receive any ransom demand, one of those things that likely signal the worst for the poor boy.
   Coincidentally, he drove me to work one morning a few days before we left on vacation. He was a brand-new mototaxi driver and I was his first paying customer. He seemed like a friendly and social guy ready to begin a new life as an adult.
    Now I fear he's just another of the thousands of young Honduran men who are gone from this world for reasons that are never talked about, at the hands of criminals who are rarely prosecuted. All his family knows is that people saw him get into a non-descript grey car without licence plates on the dirt road that I walk to work on every morning, and he hasn't been seen since. It is not an unusual scenario here.
   Having just heard the story of his disappearance, I arrived at work this morning to learn that the brother of the woman who cleans our offices was also one of the 800 sad souls who were ripped off in a fraud in July perpetrated against Hondurans with dreams of finding work in Canada.
   With visions of making decent money picking fruit in Canada for a few months, the impoverished Hondurans had scrounged up $500 each to be able to meet the requirements. That's a small fortune for most Hondurans, and some of them had to sell their houses just to be able to raise the money. Alas, the whole thing was a carefully orchestrated sham, and they have all lost their money.
    It's hard to imagine how devastating a loss like that is on the life of a rural Honduran, but the cleaning woman helped me get some perspective on it. In her tiny village of San Rafael, just a few kilometres outside of Copan Ruinas, more than 70 people lost virtually everything they had.
     They sold their bean and corn crops that would have fed their families through the non-harvest months coming up. They sold their tools. They took out loans, in some cases from the kind of people you do NOT want to be indebted to, in other cases from family members who have now been plunged into a desperate financial situation as well.
    Five of the villagers from San Rafael have already left their families behind to look for work in other parts of Honduras. This woman's brother, a single dad of two young children, expects he'll have to leave his village too. That same scenario is doubtlessly playing out in every village where impoverished farmers were tricked by clever predators who felt no shame at robbing from the poorest of the poor.
    In light of all this, in light of all the things that go wrong every day for Hondurans, what always astounds me about coming back to Copan after time away is how friendly the people are here. I'm quite sure I've exchanged more friendly greetings with Hondurans since arriving bleary-eyed and exhausted yesterday afternoon than I did in all of my two weeks of travelling in Canada and the U.S. I don't know how people maintain their optimism and cheer in this struggling country, but the difference between here and there is striking.
   I reject that "poor but happy" business, having talked to far too many Hondurans who have the same dreams as anyone for a better life for their children. Hondurans are definitely not happy about being poor, nor are they happy with the crime they experience as a regular part of life, with the absence of justice, with their indifferent and selfish government leaders.
    But they sure know how to keep a smile on their face while they wait and hope for better days. I've really missed that easy friendliness you see here: the genuine curiosity about passersby; the eye contact; the willingness to stop and chat to anyone who's smiling back. A stranger arrived at the office looking for someone who wasn't in, and greeted me with a hug just for telling her that. Even when the stories are sad, the sheer eagerness to engage is uplifting.
    Back in Canada, people barely look at each other anymore as they pass on the street, and sometimes the vibe is just this side of hostile. How can it be that people with so little can always make time for human kindness, and people with everything can't be bothered?

Just because you saw it on Facebook doesn't make it true

    I love almost everything about Facebook, from the photo-sharing and the cute-animal videos to the free emoticons you can use in your chats. But God help us if Facebook ends up being a news source for people in a post-newspaper world.

    The potential power of a medium like Facebook can’t be overstated in this viral age. Anything I write on my page can be shared in a heartbeat by any of my 1,522 Facebook friends, whose own friends (and their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends) can then spread the word even farther afield in a nano-second.

    No harm done if we’re talking about an inspirational saying, an anecdote about our day or an amusing/heartwarming/heartbreaking video about babies, cancer, birth, death, or animals demonstrating human-like behaviour (a very popular category).  Even rude stuff doesn’t rile me up, seeing as that just reflects on the reputation of the person who posted it.

    But what passes for news on Facebook really scares me. And I wonder if any of us have even considered our role in promulgating lies, misunderstanding and even hatred through the simple act of clicking “Share.”

    A recent example from today’s Facebook postings: Photos that purportedly show an unidentified Mexican water taxi in Cabo San Lucas luring seals closer to the boat by holding a puppy over the railing. There’s one photo of a tourist holding a puppy on board the boat, with a black bar across her eyes to hide her identity, and another of a puppy in someone’s hand near the railing as a seal swims up.

     Maybe it happened that way, maybe it didn’t. I’m using it here solely as an example of how quickly a story like that is swept into the Facebook universe and becomes “truth,” regardless of whether it is.

In less than 24 hours, the post has been shared 83 times from the original site and netted 87 furious comments. Who knows how many additional shares and comments came after that as more and more people posted it to their own Facebook pages?  

    The commentators write that they are shocked, saddened, sickened, disgusted and otherwise outraged. Some are slagging Mexicans for abusing animals. Some are Mexicans pushing back with comments about Americans and Canadians trying to make a big deal out of something small when there are much bigger animal-welfare issues to worry about, like factory farming and dog fights. There is a vaguely racist tone through some of the exchanges.

      Other commentators are throwing around names of tour businesses that might be the culprits, based on somebody’s vague recollection that the boat where this happened had an orange canopy.

“I work in a job where I see hundreds of tourists each week and make many recommendations,” writes one angry commentator. “Believe me, I will show them this and let’s hope eventually [the water-taxi operator] goes out of business.”

For now, let’s not get into whether holding a puppy near a boat railing is animal cruelty. The point is, nobody in the entire comment thread verifies any specifics of the incident, and the photos could be of virtually any blonde person with a puppy anywhere in the world. The photo of the puppy at the railing could have been manipulated. We just don’t know.

Yet just by clicking Share, people verify the “truth” of the story to their Facebook friends.  The ripples can be felt literally all over the world. It’s like Richter-scale gossip, with the potential in the case at hand to damage the reputation of virtually every water-taxi business in Cabo San Lucas, cast a shadow over Mexicans in general as animal abusers, and ruin the business of some poor sod who just happens to have an orange canopy on his boat.

And that’s just one small example. Every time I see people sharing one of those all-too-common threads that purports to be identifying someone who is a criminal, an animal abuser, a pedophile or an otherwise horrible human being, I wonder how long it will be before somebody winds up dead at the hands of a vigilante because a person saw something on Facebook and presumed it to be true.

We’re all going to have to do our part here. I’m not suggesting that news via the mainstream media was ever a guarantee of truth and impartiality, but I can tell you that none of them would ever publish a vague story about a puppy that may or may not have been dangled near a seal somewhere in the world.

We’re entering into completely uncharted territory now that anyone with a computer is a news source. Each of us needs to think hard about how we’ll judge our sources of news and uncover any hidden agendas. We are all citizen journalists now, and we have to think about the potential to really hurt somebody – to foment hatred, racism and ignorance – every time we share something without a second thought as to whether it’s true.

Just because somebody’s your Facebook friend doesn’t mean they can be trusted as your news source. Next time you’re hovering over that Share button, think before you click.