Turn around and there's another worthy project

Classroom windows at Copan's largest school

Want a project? I've got a thousand of them. Something about being a gringa in a country for whom gringo-ness summons images of money just seems to bring people running with ideas for how you can help.
And they're great ideas. I visited Escuela Juan Ramon Cueva in Copan Ruinas the other day and had to agree with the teacher that the place really could use a little gringo attention. A thousand students attend the school every day, and all that wear and tear is taking its toll. The roof is falling in on a couple of classrooms, and the big tin techo that shelters the courtyard where the kids play is riddled with holes and broken bits.
It would cost about $1,500 to put a new roof over the courtyard. That's nothing for a visiting group of Americans or Canadians looking to do a good deed, which is how much of the school got built in the first place. (A Rotary Club plaque hangs outside the bathrooms.)

Not long before this classroom ceiling collapses

But for the school, $1,500 is completely out of reach. There's just no place to get that money in Honduras - no government grants, no foundations, no culture of hitting up the wealthy for a big donation. I guess that's why a gringa can't go anywhere without someone hauling her off to see something in a terrible state of disrepair and then mentioning hey, if she knows anybody who might like to help....
After visiting the school I had this brilliant idea about a matchmaking service that connected volunteers from developed countries to small projects in places like Honduras. But then I went on Google and discovered that there are already several dozen such services, pitching equally worthy projects in all the hungry countries of the world.
Still, there's clearly more matchmaking to be done. If the biggest school in this region is reduced to pitching a passing stranger who's just there to admire the concrete work in the bathrooms, there still must be a lot of gaps in the process of connecting willing volunteers from developed countries with worthy projects in distant lands.
A striking number of  volunteer missions come to Honduras from the U.S. and Canada. The "Missions Calendar" featured by Honduras Weekly lists 26 groups from the U.S. alone that are coming to the country to do various good deeds between now and the end of the year. Some will provide medical and dental care; others will build things or share the word of God.
And those are just the missions that got it together to submit their listings to the on-line newspaper. The little non-profit I work for has already had two teams of U.S. volunteers come down for projects since I arrived in January, and another one is coming in November.
The first mission kicked off a major water project in La Cumbre. The second provided desperately needed veterinarian services for the livestock of subsistence farmers. The third will build 50 fuel-efficient wood cooking stoves for some of the poorest families in the country.
Great projects. But could there ever be enough international missions for all the things that need done? My sense is that there's a whole lot of untapped individual goodness in wealthy countries that could be directed toward small projects in the developing world with just a little more coordination. A little bit of time and money from comparatively affluent volunteers  goes a long, long way in poor countries.
And variety? I suspect that whatever strikes your fancy, there's a project that fits.
I've had people pitch me on reroofing a school; sponsoring their child to attend private school;  finding desks; installing bathrooms; redoing a classroom floor; organizing a water project for families in an isolated Copan barrio; building a new house for a hard-scrabble family of five; and buying $5 water jugs so villagers had something to fetch clean water in.
The woman next door is counting on me to buy  more of her handmade jewelry so her family can replace the house that the bank took. Another acquaintance just cut to the chase and asked if I'd give her family $60 every month so life wouldn't be so hard.
As the new gringa in town, all I can do is hear people out and pick the projects most likely to have impact while also being manageable for me and my supporters back home. But I still feel bad every time I see the guy who pitched me on the water project for his barrio. And I would love to be able to hook up the director of Escuela Juan Ramon Cueva with someone who could get her roof project done.
Maybe you? Call me.

Yo entiendo! Yo entiendo!

A Czech proverb: You live a new life for every new language you speak. Now that I'm finally getting a handle on this business of learning Spanish, I couldn't agree more.

Cuso International really took a chance on me when they brought me to Honduras with what can only be described as seriously rudimentary Spanish skills. And for that I will always be in their debt. Of all the things I appreciate about this interesting new life, what I love the most is the worlds that are opening up to me because I'm learning another language.

It hasn't been easy. Despite being immersed in an all-Spanish environment for the last six months, I still need a Spanish-English dictionary close at hand at all times. I have to spend at least 10 minutes a day reading out loud from the San Pedro newspaper or a Spanish novel to sharpen my ear and my pronunciation. 

I still flip through the absolutely essential Barron's 501 Spanish Verbs daily, checking up on some of the trickier conjugations and sorting out the more idiosyncratic rules. I still make mistakes all the time when I speak. I don't understand everything that's being said to me, and group conversations continue to give me headaches.

But it's coming. I've learned a lot of new things in my lifetime and have always noticed that things start falling into place at the six-month mark. And I'm greatly relieved to discover that's true in language acquisition as well. 

Yesterday I managed a long conversation with a man I'd never met before (new people are always the biggest challenge, because everybody has their own way of speaking) that covered topics ranging from the kinds of vegetables they grow in Guatemala, why the water tastes funny there, the murder of some of his family members last year at the hands of a jealous ex, and the dangers of a prickly looking green caterpillar that fell from a tree overhead as we stood talking. 

Just to be chatting like that, with a guy who I would have struggled to exchange simple pleasantries with just a few months ago - that's a wonderful thing. I've been able to manage basic tourist-level queries in Spanish for a while now because of our travels in Mexico, but to be able to share the stories of people's daily lives changes everything about the travel experience.

The compulsory French I took in school probably helped to prepare my brain for learning a new language, and I know that my many years of studying music was good for that as well. I don't think I have a natural aptitude for new languages, however, and am pretty old to be trying to learn one. So consider me heartening proof that it can be done at any age.

I put in some serious study time in the three months before we left Canada and then a month in language school once we arrived. Still, I struggled to understand most of what my co-workers said to me for the first couple of months of my placement. 

I suspect I came across as a pleasant but possibly stupid new volunteer. I never knew what the heck was going on in the staff meetings, and routinely misunderstood what my co-workers at the Comision de Accion Social Menonita were trying to say to me. And how kind of them to keep straight faces when they learned I was there to help with communications. 

But now I've got a Spanish Facebook page going on for CASM. I can go out on field trips and talk to the people we work with. I can even talk to children, whose squeaky little voices and rapid cadence were like Martian-speak to me in the early weeks. I'm able to show my personality more, and no longer feel like the smiling, silent cypher sidelined from the office banter.

I still use Google Translate frequently, but now it's for checking my Spanish rather than translating my English. I still find myself going blank in the middle of a conversation as I grasp for a word that I just haven't learned yet, but am much better at quickly finding an alternate way to say the same thing. 

I would never suggest that I'm fluent yet, of course. But at least I now believe that day will come.

When it's all up to you

One of the things I don’t expect to get used to about life in a poor country is witnessing suffering without being able to do much about it.

No country is free of suffering, of course. Abuse, isolation, cruelty, hunger – there’s nowhere in the world that gets a free pass on such things.

But at least in countries like Canada and the U.S., there’s some organization or government body that you can protest to, some cage to rattle on behalf of whatever suffering person or animal has got your attention. Not here.

Yesterday morning, for instance, I came across a bony, sick horse while on one of my bird rambles in the hills. She had several festering sores on her back that were covered in flies, which she couldn’t even brush away because her tail was snarled around a big thorny stick she’d picked up while wandering through the bushes.

Back in the city where I came from, I can think of five or six different groups I could phone to do something about a sick, abandoned horse. Victoria responds to suffering animals with significantly more compassion than it does to suffering people, so with only a couple of phone calls I could probably get a poor old horse like that a front-page media story, immediate veterinary care and a happy new home before day’s end.

Here, the best I could do was approach the wary horse gently from behind and pull the thorn stick out of her tail. Even if I’d had a halter at the ready and a place to lead her, chances are she has an owner – a lot of the pathetic, starved looking livestock and pets around Copan have owners, many of them rather pathetic and starved-looking themselves – who wouldn’t take kindly to me leading his horse away. And it’s not like there’s an SPCA to lodge a complaint with or to step up with a home for an underfed horse.

I saw a skinny pig a couple weeks ago on one of the subsistence farms I visited through my work, drained by the eight piglets it was nursing. Trust me, you never want to see a skinny pig. Any creature that has just given birth around here – pig, dog, cow or impoverished villager – tends to look pretty skeletal. Virtually every day I see hungry-looking people and animals that could really use a good meal, a hot bath and a few kind words.

But there’s nobody to come to their rescue. There’s me and whatever resources I might be able to bring to a situation in the moment, and any other passing strangers who react in similar ways. I’m certainly not alone in trying to step up to alleviate some of the unnecessary suffering that goes on here, but it still comes down to one person and whatever they're able to do.

There’s no organized animal rescue. No real children’s welfare organization. No shelters or food programs, no rights organizations battling on behalf of neglected horses, exploited women, hungry children, desperate families. In truth, there’s no one to go to battle with anyway, because the Honduras government really doesn’t have much interest in any of this stuff and can handle public shaming with barely a blink.
 My socially minded acquaintances would probably tell me that all anyone can do in this world is “plant seeds” and do the best they can. I’m there philosophically, but such sentiments aren’t much comfort in the moment, when you’re looking at a horse facing death from starvation and infection and all you can do is pull a stick out of its tail. Or press 20 lempiras into the hand of the old, old woman with the arthritic knees. Or take young orphans to a swimming pool every couple of weeks, as if that alone could ever change the course of their sad, challenged lives.

A person has to try, of course. It’s you or nothing, after all. You quickly feel the weight of personal responsibility here in Honduras.

On the upside, it’s always good to know what you’re capable of. In my old life, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have stood within easy kicking distance of a strange horse and pulled on its tail. I doubt I would have pulled five ticks off a neighbourhood dog that paused on our patio for food. I certainly wouldn’t have spent hours in a pool entertaining young children I’m not related to.

Last summer, I came across a wounded seagull lying on a lawn near my house in Victoria. I carried him home in complete confidence that I would find some animal-welfare organization to collect the gull and look after it until it healed, because that’s how it is in the land where I come from. And of course, that’s exactly what happened (thank you, Wild ARC).

I bet the hungry families and neglected animals of Honduras would get quite a rueful laugh out of that story. Pick-up vet service for a dime-a-dozen gull, and they can’t even count on their next meal. I’m grateful for how much we care for our own in Canada, but sometimes it just makes you more aware of how little there is for the rest of the world. 

Finally made the acquaintance of an albanil

It's a happy, happy day - not only did I just meet with a real live albanil just now, but we went up to the Angelitos Felices children's home and actually did a tour of the disastrous bathrooms I'm hoping to fix up.
I was griping rather heavily in my last post about the impossibility of finding an albanil - a mason, the trade that does bathroom work here in Honduras because everything's made out of concrete. But a North Carolina fellow who is with Paramedics for Children and his Copan-connected employee Marco Tulios came through today, introducing me to Nelson Rodriguez.
The four of us went up to Angelitos to take a look at what's needed, which turns out to be total renos in the two bathrooms and a big new water tank on the roof so that the home has an adequate supply. Nelson supervised the bathroom renos at one of the big schools in Copan with 1,000 students, and vows he knows how to build a bathroom that's built to last. And that's exactly what Angelitos needs, what with 30 or 40 kids (some living there permanently, others attending day care) giving those two shabby, inadequate bathrooms a workout every single day.
I'm bracing for the estimate, but am really looking forward to seeing that project underway. Trust me, it only takes one peek into the filthy, broken, waterless "bathroom" that the children use the most to keep a person motivated, whatever the price. At least I'm able to put off my original mattress project for a bit seeing as somebody else stepped up on that front and put in some skinny, plastic-wrapped colchones that will do for now.
Life does indeed take a person in unexpected directions. Here I am, getting ready to supervise bathroom renovations at a foster home in Honduras. Who'd have thought?

And to think I thought it was about the money

Everyone who has lived in a foreign country warns you of the challenges of adjusting to a different culture. I'm living that right now, stuck in the incomprehensible process of looking for someone to do repairs at the children's home I'm involved with.
I know things get done here in Honduras, because I see them happening. But how you make them happen - ah, now there's the question.
At least a dozen men have been occupied for weeks building a massive and intricate rock wall around a house near my workplace. They look like they know what they're doing. Every day I see a constant flurry of construction activity in the centre of Copan Ruinas - buildings coming down, new ones going up, renovations all over the place. And virtually any male Copaneco I've met in my six months here knows how to do basic home repairs or even fix his own vehicle.
So yes, this place has skilled workers. But can I get any of them to call me? Can I get anyone even just to tell me the name of someone who knows how to renovate a bathroom or hang a new door? Nope.
Silly me, I thought the challenge was going to be finding the money for a few badly needed fixups at the Angelitos Felices guardaria . That turned out to be the easy part. What's much, much harder is identifying who will do the work.
Back in Canada, I'd be flipping through the Yellow Pages or talking to friends who'd had work done. Make a couple phone calls, agree on a price, off we'd go. But there's no handy listing of qualified contractors anywhere here in Copan, and nobody in my small circle of acquaintances who appears to be in any hurry to share the secrets of securing a contractor.
Sure, they all tell me they know somebody. But that's part of the culture, too - say what you need to say in the moment to get the person asking you questions to go away. I've learned that in Honduras, just because a person tells you they know somebody who can help doesn't mean they actually do, and it definitely doesn't mean they're going to get that person to call you anytime soon.
So far I've tried my boss, a co-worker, my otherwise-helpful neighbour, my landlord, a Texan who has lived here for 15 years, and a local who the Texan recommended as a trustworthy, get-'er-done kind of guy. Every one of them said they knew somebody, and that they'd get the person to call me.
But the days and weeks pass, and nobody ever calls.
Today, I went to the hardware store and in desperation asked the woman who owns the place - another neighbour of mine - if she knew of anyone who does plumbing work or can hang a door. No, she said. Nothing more than that, just "no." I heard the clerk beside her whisper something into her ear about somebody named Eddie being a possibility, but my neighbour just turned away to serve another customer.
I mean, every day they must have tradespeople coming into that store for supplies. Why can't I have one? How can it be this hard, in a poor country with scary unemployment rates, to find somebody who wants a job?
I remember visiting the zocalo in Mexico City years ago and spotting a huge line of  day labourers along one of the fences, each with a big sign saying what type of work they were good at. I have a new appreciation for such a system. I fear I'm heading for a repeat of how it went when we needed a place to live in Copan, a process that turned out to involve wandering through small convenience stores asking random strangers if they knew of any houses for rent.
And this is just to get somebody to go to the children's home and give me a quote for the work. I shudder to think what challenges might await once the work is actually underway. Another Texan who has been in Copan for 15 years (there appears to be a few of those here) cautioned me to not only get everything in writing but to make the contractor repeat aloud, at least twice, all my instructions for the project. And not to pay for anything in advance.
But I've always said I like a challenge, so best to quit whinging and just get on with it. Flow like water, I keep telling myself: Hit a barrier, flow around it. Maybe I'll stop by the rock-wall project tomorrow and see if anyone knows a plumber.