Goodbye, Michelle - you'll be missed

    Sad news today about the death of Michelle Stewart, the long-time B.C. government communications person who came out so bravely a year ago with a blog on life with end-stage kidney failure due to a lifelong eating disorder.
    A communicator to the end, Michelle kept on blogging right up until a month ago, when her deteriorating health got to be too much for her to continue. I highly recommend a read of her blog for anyone who has had or wondered about what it's like to have a persistent eating disorder, because Michelle did some of the most insightful and painfully honest writing about that torturous condition that I've ever read. She made what was surely a immensely difficult and ultimately fatal decision to let her kidney disease go largely untreated (the treatment, a transplant, would have worked only if she could have gotten control over her eating disorder), and then blogged bravely about her body's relentless deterioration as the disease took over.
    Those who know her well will remember her for all kinds of reasons, but may she also be remembered for her exceptional abilities as a government communications staffer who became an expert in her own right on the foibles, complexities, struggles and shining moments of our challenged health-care system. As a journalist, I always liked it when Michelle was the person I got passed off to for answers, because then I knew for sure I'd be getting an answer and that it would be a meaningful one.
    I didn't get the chance to know her more personally until she was already dying. We connected last year on Facebook after I started reading her blog, and I soon joined what I imagine was legions of fans who she'd exchange endearing messages with from time to time.
    I admit, I selfishly wished that she would still be well enough to have visitors when I returned from Honduras in early April. I'd met her in person no more than once or twice in all our years of living and working in the same city, yet felt after our electronic correspondence over the past year that we had all kinds of things to talk about.
    Unfortunately, she was already too sick when I got home for us to be able to have those conversations. But the gift of her blog is that people who never got the chance to know her while alive will still be able to take in her well-informed and insightful thoughts.
     Catch you next time around, Michelle. You did your job well. You loved and were loved. You made a difference in this world, and shared yourself with all of us this past year even when it would have been so much easier to have just left those painful stories untold. Thank you.
 

What to do about temporary foreign workers: Help them find work

   

Underneath all the current noise around temporary foreign workers are a couple basic truths. One is that people who need money and work will always be drawn toward countries that appear to have an abundance of both. The other is that people already settled in those countries will find ways to exploit that desire.
    And so we have this latest news of Israelis lured to Canada to work in mall kiosks, falsely promised wages and sales volumes the likes of which many Canadians would be happy to earn themselves. But of course, events didn't unfold like that, and now we are neck-deep in embarrassing allegations of modern-day slavery and an astounding absence of regulatory oversight.
    My perspective on temporary workers has changed significantly since my time in Honduras, where I saw things from the other side of the line. Legal or illegal, a job in a land like Canada or the United States changes everything for the families who suddenly have access to money they could never hope to earn in their own land. I'm quite sure that any one of us could be converted into people who would enter another country illegally if it meant the bills would get paid and the kids would be fed and clothed.
     Developed countries worry a lot about migrants sneaking into their countries to take under-the-counter work and then staying. But what I saw in Honduras was that many, many migrants returned home after four or five years, having earned enough money to build their house, launch their business, put their children through decent schools. That seemed especially true among illegal migrants, who often had quite focused plans about where they were going to go, how they were prepared to live while there (low-cost to the extreme) and how they would use the money they'd be sending back home. There's a style of house in Honduras that I came to think of as "U.S. Migrant" because its higher quality and North-American influenced design made those very attractive, well-built houses stand out so much from those around them.
    From the receiving country's perspective, the discussion almost always goes fairly quickly to the question of migrants "taking good (insert country here) jobs," or lowering work standards because they work for less and aren't able to complain if some of the working conditions are breaking the law. Much of the news coverage of the exploited Israelis is portraying the matter as one of employer exploitation and lack of regulatory oversight, but underneath such issues is always the lingering question of whether such jobs really needed to be shopped out internationally in the first place.
    Having heard countless hair-raising stories as to what people are prepared to do to sneak into another country if it means they'll find well-paid work, I am now of the view that there's no way a developed country is ever going to build a wall high enough to stop the flow across its borders of people seeking a better future.
    I am also of the view that human nature being what it is, there will be no end to people who seek their own better future by exploiting the basic desires of desperate people to have a better life. During our time in Honduras, there was a tragic news story about a scam involving fictional temporary jobs in Canada that left dozens of struggling Honduran families destitute. They'd sold land, borrowed from their families, done whatever they had to do to raise money for huge fees for the supposed work program, only to find out the program didn't exist.
    What to do? Short of wishing on a star for an end to global poverty and unscrupulous people, I think all you can do is look at the reality of things and act accordingly. Canada can't stop gullible people from other lands from believing some scamster's story that our country is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but it can prevent said scamster from simply doing whatever he wants once the people arrive. Canada has the regulations and laws needed to prevent such exploitation, but what recent high-profile cases are revealing is that we no longer seem to have the will or the resources to enact them. That's a pretty big problem.
    And were it all up to me, I would create more legitimate temporary-worker programs. Nothing I saw coming out of development aid in Honduras rivalled the economic power of the country's migrant tradition. A fifth of the country's GDP comes from money being sent home by Hondurans working outside the country, legally or illegally. Why not help countries like Honduras at the grassroots level by permitting more people to come here to work for four or five years?
    As for "good Canadian jobs," we have no one but ourselves and our poor choices of governments to credit for the deterioration of that vision. Free trade may be better for the world, but it's not better for workers in the developed country jobbing out the work. Salaries have stagnated while costs have soared. I know, because I remember how my first husband and I, at the tender ages of 21 and 17, managed a household, a child, a mortgage, two cars and an annual holiday to somewhere like Disneyland or Hawaii on his resource-industry salary. How many young couples could say the same nowadays?
   As a nation made up almost completely of migrants, Canadians should know more than most that there's no stopping the drive to seek greener pastures. People are going to come. But surely there are better ways to manage that reality more effectively than to cut regulatory services to the bone and then act surprised when desperate foreigners pack their bags anyway and bad people lead them astray.

In my mother's house

 

  My mother throws dinner parties four times a week. Add in three weekly lunch parties, afternoon teas with various friends, and crib at odd hours with the little collection of men my mother has organized to play with her, and it has been a bit like living in a community centre since we moved in to her apartment at the beginning of the month.

    While Mom’s love for social engagements and constant preparation of meals is foreign to me, it’s been quite interesting to see all of it in action after moving in on our return from Honduras.  A lot of the guests are seriously old – last week, a 94-year-old drove over with his 96-year-old friend for tea – but every one of them challenge that stereotype of creaky, bent-back oldsters with nothing to say. They are a saucy, styling, joke-telling, life-appreciating bunch, Mom and all her buddies.

    Soon to be 89, my mother has suffered many blows to her mobility ever since she was hit by a car in a crosswalk 12 years ago. But between her pathological sociability and drive to work harder, harder, harder as if you just might beat that whole aging thing down forever with enough focus, she has figured out how to stay in the game by bringing people to her. She can’t comfortably get out of the apartment as easily as she once did, but no matter because the people now come filing in, carrying their meatloaf and their baked treats and their bottles of wine for sharing.

    Schooled by my mother’s regular declarations of how much she hates gifts of flowers or plants, they now come with pounds of butter, big cans of nuts, boxes of chocolate. Living here these past three weeks has been like constant Christmas, what with all the good food always lying around.

    In return, Mom makes everybody a darn fine meal, typically in the classic meat-potatoes-and-dessert style that those of her age are accustomed to, but with a lot of variety. She knows a thousand ways to serve leftovers. She can stretch a turkey like you can’t believe. A stickler for a good deal, my mother prides herself on managing all this sociability on a mere $6 a day, although she mentioned the other day that she’s soon going to have to adjust that limit higher. Having friends who are constantly coming through the door with something yummy in their hands certainly helps.

    Even as I write this, I've got my laptop squeezed into a corner of the huge dining room table my mother has set for tonight’s 9-person dinner party, and she will soon be nagging me into the TV room so she can adjust the place setting I have pushed into the centre of the table. On Tuesday, she’s having another dinner party for 11. Then there’s the regular Wednesday lunch gig with neighbours she used to live with back at her former apartment, and the regular Thursday night gig with “my boydies,” as she calls the four men who play crib with her regularly.

    I think she’s crazy to be doing it all. But hey, it keeps her happy. It keeps her busy. It keeps her gossiping and telling jokes and having a lot of remember-the-time-when conversations with people she has known for a very long time. Meanwhile, the friends are keeping busy too, having to get into their own kitchens to make something to share at the next gathering and then out the door to eat it. They come carefully through Mom’s apartment door with their walkers and their canes and their crutches, but pretty soon they’re all laughing and maybe forgetting for a little while about that aging body that doesn’t get them around like it used to.

    I think I’m too much of an introvert to be able to follow Mom’s path into healthy aging. But I admire her style. I admire her ability to create a full, rich life in one of the most isolation-prone life stages. I admire her commitment to exhausting herself as testament that she can still kick out the jams.

    And the food’s good.

Sex Work Alliance guide to effective consultations with Ottawa

    The Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform has just put out an excellent guide for sex workers and allies looking to be more effective in driving legislative change. It's well-written, thorough and well-organized, and while it's focus is decriminalization, the information in the guide would be useful for prompting a change in thinking around any number of issues under federal jurisdiction. It's really a how-to for the engaged citizen.
    This is a big year for sex work law reform in Canada, what with the three key laws around adult, consensual sex work having been struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada in December. Those of us who support decriminalization as a step toward increasing safety, respect and dignity for adult sex workers will need to be out there pushing on this issue, because it's not a subject that rests easy with any political party.
     Download the guide here and put it to use in all your advocacy work. 

A tire goes flat, a meeting starts: Defining a culture

   I suppose I’ll be comparing here with there for a while yet, even though I’m a big believer in living where you’re at. But just two weeks back, I’m seeing the differences between Honduras and Canada so clearly right now with these newly returned eyes, and it’s pretty interesting to reflect on what’s good and bad in each of our cultures.

     I've come up with a little story that I hope demonstrates what I think is a fundamental difference between the cultures of Canada and Honduras. Here’s the scenario: A person is in a car going down the highway, headed for a morning meeting at 9 a.m. Just the day before, this person fixed their own flat tire, so happens to have a tire iron on the car floor. As they drive along, they pass another person broken down at the side of the road with their own flat tire.

     What I think would happen in Canada: The driver passing by might consider stopping, but would check his or her watch and realize that would make them late for the meeting, and probably get them in trouble with their boss. The driver would also remember advice from somebody or other that no one should ever stop at the side of the road to help a random stranger. And besides, surely the person with the broken-down car would have BCAA or at the very least a cell phone to be able to call somebody else for help. So the passer-by would keep on driving, and the meeting would begin on time.

     What I think would happen in Honduras: Not only would somebody stop to help, but probably three or four more would as well. They would emerge from their cars greeting each other and spend at least 10 minutes joking and talking about this or that. At least two people in the group would discover they were related. Meanwhile, one of the many people who sell tamales, fried-chicken dinners and fruit on the buses would notice a group starting to gather, and would come by to sell them food. They’d buy some, perch here and there along the roadside while sharing food and banter, and eventually they’d patch up the flat tire with whatever was handy and everybody would get on their way.

     Were there anyone among them who had been on their way to a 9 a.m. meeting, that person would have arrived an hour or more late. But a lot of other people would have arrived almost that late to the meeting as well, so in fact he or she wasn’t really late at all. Sometime later, the meeting would get underway.

      There’s good and bad to each scenario. If you’re the driver broken down at the side of the road, nothing could be better than a whole lot of people passing by who want to help, and damn that 9 a.m. meeting start time. But when people don’t arrive at meetings on time, things get sloppy in all kinds of ways. Honduras’s relaxed culture shows its dark side in all its failed systems and inability to control massive social problems. Got to be organized to make all that complex stuff work.

     But there’s something profound lost as well among those who choose organization over human relations. Yes, they end up with one heck of a nice country due to all their collective striving, but there appears to be a kind of drawing inward that comes with cultural prosperity. We help each other in truly meaningful ways, like by paying our taxes and demanding accountable government, but on a day to day basis we're not exactly warm and friendly.

     I feel like our lives are so much more isolated here in Canada. Clearly our cultural style works well for creating quality education and health care, a functioning justice system, great roads and economic stability, but I wonder now if one of the costs might be a loss of human connection.

     I particularly feel it now when I’m in the car, having mostly been stuck with bus travel for the last two years. There was a lot about bus travel that I hated, but the one thing it gives you in a country like Honduras is lots of contact with other people. They’re going to be squeezing onto your seat, stumbling over you, bumping into you, spilling a plate of rice on you and trying to sell you things. I wouldn't want to suggest that much about bus travel in a developing country is fun at the time, but you certainly do get your full quota of human contact.

      Transportation here is so much cleaner, quicker and less risky than it was in Honduras, but it feels so much lonelier. With our windows up and ours cars on the move, we zip around in our solitary little bubbles, in the midst of thousands of people and yet alone.

      Of course, my Honduran acquaintances would love to have the problems I’m mentioning. Everyone driving around on beautifully maintained, wide roads in their own comfy cars, which they can afford because they’re paid a decent wage? Bring it on!

     What they don’t yet know, though, is that when the day comes that their schools are good and they’re making a fair wage and their roads don’t suck and almost everybody’s got their own cars, they just might find themselves rushing off to a meeting one day without even thinking twice about helping somebody broken down at the side of the road.

      Win some. Lose some.

Two different worlds, and something to be said for both of them

Thetis Lake

  I've found myself using the phrase, “And the infrastructure here!” a lot since arriving back on the Island from Honduras, so I guess that must be one of the things that has struck me most now that I am back to the life of a Canadian.

    But in truth, there are so many points of comparison, good and bad. I do like sewage pipes big enough to embrace toilet paper, and water that comes straight out of the tap ready to drink. And the green spaces – well, I’m ecstatic about the green spaces. Honduras has the right climate for amazing public boulevards but at the moment there are hardly any, so just walking along the Gorge appreciating Saanich’s free flower and plant display is a rush for me these days.

    On the downside, people are much less friendly here as they pass each other on the street. I’m really struck by how many people go out of their way to not make eye contact with the passing stranger, or even drop their gaze just at the point where a person might otherwise say, “Hello!” Walking in Honduras was a festival of “Holas!” and “Buenas Tardes!” because everybody greets everybody there. I’m missing that.

    As for that infrastructure, there’s just no comparison. Canadians have some amazing infrastructure. The roads! The signal lights! The beautiful public washrooms! Every day since we arrived last Wednesday, I’ve found myself appreciating some aspect of good old Canadian infrastructure while reflecting on the lack of it in the country I just came from. Not only are the sidewalks wide enough to accommodate walking abreast or even the occasional errant cyclist, they’re even level and well-maintained, and none of them ends in a leg-busting dropoff.

Riverside in a San Pedro slum

     On the downside, I wonder increasingly whether having everything just so nice makes us a bit  tense and cranky as a society. There is a certain tendency here to look for reasons to get angry at people for breaking the rules, and I don’t just mean the tenant in my mom’s apartment building who is currently harassing Mom’s 83-year-old sister and her husband for making too much noise.
    The noise went on and on in Honduras, and I do admit that sometimes I was not happy at all to hear it. There were times where Paul and I couldn’t hear each other inside the house mere metres apart, because there was some car blasting up the street right outside the front of our house.

    But you know, life’s too short for feeling mad at people. Something’s gained and something’s lost when we create a society as controlled as Canada’s. I've learned in this time away that there’s a strange freedom to just giving into the noises of the world around you and letting go of that strange bitterness that can manifest in developed cultures when other people won’t do what we say. At any rate, isn't that why they invented ear plugs?

     My friends and co-workers from Honduras would be awed by this place. Three of them went to Wisconsin for a week during my time there, and they came raving about the highway rest stops and the autumn leaves. Imagine if they saw B.C. I feel like being away for more than two years is letting me see this place of ours through Honduran eyes, and it is a knockout.

    As much as we like to gripe about our governments and our taxes here in Canada, we have been blessed with decades and decades of governments and citizens who have given us the gifts of unbelievable infrastructure, parkland, well-educated children, Medicare, well-paid jobs, old-age security, social support. I have never appreciated Canadian-style government more than during these two years of living in a country that virtually didn’t have a government in any kind of meaningful way. Thank your lucky stars, people.

    We are much older here. I see that in all the faces that look like mine, whereas half of Honduras’s population is under 25. I was always so much older than anyone else in the room when I was meeting with my co-workers or doing just about anything in a group in Honduras; all my co-workers, even my boss in Copan, were young enough to be my kids. Here, people in their 50s and up are the majority. It’s neither good nor bad, just different. Definitely a different energy.

     We have much more money, of course. And much, much more stuff. But I wouldn’t level that as a criticism against Canadians, because I think everyone in Honduras would love to have a life like so many of ours, full of things to buy and money to buy them. (I’m convinced Honduras is ripe for a chain of good second-hand furniture stores with really fair prices, because you would not believe how fast our furniture sold in the days before we left Copan Ruinas last week. I even sold my potted plants.)

    I miss the heat of Honduras. But I love the long days of Victoria. I miss all the dogs that used to ramble around the streets. But it’s nice now to see nothing but fat and happy dogs with healthy fur.

    I don't think I ever would have considered that having dogs rambling around free was fun. But in fact, the practice let me get to know some really special dogs, including the one we brought home with us. Sure, sure, I dream of a world where every dog is a wanted dog. But that’s not to say there isn't a lot of pleasure in just developing relationships with strays and hungry canine neighbours who show up at your door for food and affection.

    People have told me that some of my posts remind them of all the things we have to be grateful of as Canadians. That is so true. Anyone who thinks that less government would be good for the country really ought to get on down to Honduras and just take a look at how that’s going for them. I know more than ever now that good governance and responsible, organized use of public money are absolutely critical to everything. 

    But at the same time, I’d caution against believing that everything is better in Canada.

    Ultimately, Canada is probably the country I would wish for on behalf of my friends in Honduras, because they would love to live like this. They want jobs that pay what they’re worth, health benefits, good schools and opportunities for their kids. They would like to have a 65-kilometre drive on a great road that takes 40 minutes, rather than a bumpy, dangerous and slow weaving trip that takes an hour and three quarters. Just like us, they want their kids to be well-schooled and well set up for a good life. They would go crazy for potable water and incredible internet speeds.

    But now I feel a new connection to another kind of life, too. It’s messy and uncertain, but also compelling and warm, in every sense. It’s a life that reminds you of the sheer persistence of the human race, in the face of all kinds of weirdness and unfortunate developments. There are Hondurans who are actually 100% self-sustaining, and with none of the hullabaloo and fanfare that greet such rare practices in our over-served land.

    On the one hand, I am glad to be from a country that doesn’t let strangers just wander on up to an orphanage and start hanging out with the kids, even taking them to the pool unescorted. On the other, that aspect of our lives in Copan Ruinas, hanging out with the Angelitos Felices children, was an amazing part of our two years there.

    In Honduras, there is no real option except to trust that someone means you no harm, because no one's going to do anything about it anyway. There might be laws or a regulation, but no one is enforcing them. Here, we leave nothing to chance. Those have been two interesting extremes to contemplate.

    So. Get on out there and enjoy a green space you especially like, and think about all those generations before you who did their part to leave you that gift. Take along a water bottle filled straight out of the tap. If you’re a cyclist, look down at that bike lane you’re riding in and think about how something like that didn't just happen. 

    Then put your head up and say hi to whoever passes. We've got a lot of things to be happy for in this country. Smile.

White Dog: The rest of the story

 

White Dog in my stepson's Vancouver apartment

I've been posting a lot of White Dog updates on Facebook but realized that not everyone who saw my first blog post on her is my Facebook friend and might be wondering how the story ended.
    It ended well. White Dog is now settled in her new home in Cumberland, and judging by the little video I saw yesterday of her bouncing around with my daughter and her family on a Comox Valley beach, settling in quite nicely. And just like childbirth, all the hassle has been forgotten just seeing how happy she is to be here and how happy my family is to have her as their newest addition.
    But that's not to say that anything about the process was easy or cheap. When last I posted, White Dog's tab was at around $1000, which included vet bills to get her ready to come, shipping and pet brokerage fees (expensive!). We got hit with an additional $90 after we arrived in Canada - $30 to the Canada Border Agency and $60 to the company that handles cargo at the Vancouver Airport.

WD in her kennel at the San Pedro cargo area

    We would have incurred even more costs for transport were it not for having good friends with big vehicles. A Kennel 500 is one honking piece of furniture, and we had four seriously big suitcases and an accordion to transport as well because we were leaving the country and packing up what little household goods we had. There were four legs of land transport that would have been difficult and costly had friends not stepped forward to help us out.
     My Honduran boss Merlin Fuentes transported all of us and our luggage to San Pedro Sula from Copan Ruinas, saving us money but more importantly, an unbelievably difficult four-hour bus ride. Another co-worker in San Pedro took us to the airport on the morning of our flight, and patiently drove us around the airport as we looked for the cargo place where we could drop off the dog (which nobody informed us of until the night before).
    While we'd initially thought White Dog would be flown into Victoria along with us, her flight in fact ended in Vancouver, which is apparently as far as the company will take the dog. So then we needed my partner's son Sam to step up and come and get us at the Vancouver Airport at midnight. We didn't get out of there until after 2 a.m. due to an enormous final hassle they saddle you with in which you have to drive back and forth between the cargo area and the airport to get papers stamped by customs and fees paid.

First daffodil experience during a morning walk in Vancouver

    Then we were in Vancouver with no way to get to Victoria. Happily, another friend who happened to be returning to Victoria from the mainland on Wednesday and had a big vehicle stuffed the dog and I in and we came on the ferry. Paul had taken a couple of the bigger bags earlier that morning and made use of one of those two flights we'd paid for to Victoria; we had no choice but to forfeit the other one.  But then my daughter met us at my mom's place in Victoria and White Dog stepped out into her new life, and all was well.  
    She seems invigorated by the cooler temperatures, and I'm sure will be forever grateful that the ticks aren't nearly so relentless in Canada and the municipality doesn't poison dogs on a regular basis. She has a new pal, Angus - my daughter's other dog - and a family with a nice yard and a lot of chicken gizzards to share.
     And it's great to have her here. She's the ultimate Honduran souvenir. I still blush when I think of just how much money we ended up spending to bring her, but let's just consider that water under the bridge. 

Sometimes a girl just needs to shop

 I went shopping today, and it made me really happy. Is that wrong? I wouldn't care anyway, that was how good it felt.
   As much as I tried to pretend it wasn't so, Honduras was not a shopping mecca. I struggled with both the styles and the fabrics, and the shape of the clothes just isn't cut for broad-backed, big-shouldered Canadian girls. So when I pulled my bike up to Value Village this afternoon and walked through those familiar glass doors with money in my pocket, I felt something close to euphoria.
   It was one of those days where I had the used-clothing-store golden touch. I even found jeans and shorts. I got 13 stamps on my Value Village card, a promotion I hadn't known existed but was happy to take advantage of. I am no longer feeling completely discouraged by my clothing, and finally threw out the strange red hoodie shirt that always makes me feel depressed when I wear it.
    I rediscovered my silver shoes in the storage locker today, too. I loved digging some of my favourite clothes out of the storage tote, their warm fabrics and funky styles once again important to me in these chillier surroundings. During my Honduras time I was pretty much always overheated and sweaty, so "funky style" hasn't been something I've paid much attention to these past two years. It's good to be considering it again.
    The moral? Don't take easy shopping for granted. There are countries in the world where the fabrics are scratchy, the colours are all wrong, and you forever feel like the friendly giant shopping at the petite store. Today was the best $56 I've spent in a while.

It's all about the little things. Or so I tell myself

  “Turn a bit more this way,” my co-worker advised Friday as he arranged a couple of us for a photo while we gathered for a goodbye cappuccino. “I want to make sure the light is behind me.”

    Music to my ears, my Copan friend. As I bid farewell to Honduras after more than two years of trying to help my workmates get the hang of good communications, I don’t want to just hear that they’ll miss me. I want to hear that they won’t forget all the things we’ve been working on this whole time.

    Better photos was a biggie. All the funders want their projects well-documented through photos, but my workmates are renowned for taking atrociously bad photos. So hearing Edy talking about repositioning himself to get a better photo – well, I feel really good about that, what with all the talks and training around photos during which I was never sure whether any of them were very into it.

    We did a lot of work around Facebook, too.  I think it could be an incredible tool for small development organizations in terms of sharing knowledge and information about their projects, and Facebook’s extroverted nature is a good match for Hondurans, most of whom who are exceedingly extroverted.

    I guess we’ll have to see whether any of that training sticks, though. While I’ve tried to keep the regions’ Facebook pages lively, there’s not much evidence to this point that anyone is going to pick such things up after I’m gone. But hey, hope springs eternal.

    Looking back on things, I really had no idea when we started in February 2012 what I and the Comision de Accion Social Menonita might accomplish by the end of our time together. There were times in the first year when I thought it was all going to be hopeless. But something started to click around the nine-month mark. I began letting go of my expectations, and they began thinking that maybe I could actually be helpful.     And away we went.

    The goal of Cuso International’s work is largely around building capacity – in other words, help people develop some new ways of doing things that they can continue doing after the volunteer goes home. Sounds good, but what I’ve found when it comes to communications – in Honduras and in Canada – is that it’s not just a task of teaching eager people how to tell their stories better, it’s about convincing them that they should even be interested in that.

    So any capacity-building work thus involves a good deal of salesmanship in the early stages, at least when the subject is communications. In fact I’ve had to remain a salesperson right through these two years, grabbing every chance to jump into a conversation with some cheery advice about turning a particular moment or bit of news into a communications opportunity. But in the end we got a lot done, from videos and web sites to easy-to-use guides on growing better cocoa, not to mention about a million photos.

    As I’ve discovered about development work, there comes a time when you look at the little thing you’re trying to do in the midst of profound, complex problems like widespread poverty, staggering levels of violence and murder, a completely inadequate education system and babies dying for want of basic, cheap medical care, and you think, Really? Getting these guys to post photos on Facebook more often is going to change the future for this beleaguered country?

    But on my better days I see that you can’t change the big stuff without changing the small stuff first. If CASM can talk more effectively about the work it does, it can attract more funding, which in turn creates projects but also jobs, something that Honduras needs most to start to turn things around. If CASM can document its work in videos, it can demonstrate conditions in its communities – the impossible roads, the lack of infrastructure, the challenges in getting goods to market - that might lead to more realistic interventions by funders rather than quite so much pie-in-the-sky projects that don’t take into account the reality of life here.

    If NGOs were to share the findings of their projects more widely, other NGOs could replicate the successes and avoid the failures, and together they could strengthen the social fabric and build economic networks rather than just do the same survival-based projects over and over again in isolation. (As one funder acquaintance noted, “We can’t just keep on doing beans and corn.”)

    But while I’d be happy to claim a tiny speck of credit for perhaps improving organizational communications in Honduras, one thing I became more convinced of the longer I was here was that it will take a lot more than cheery development work to turn things around here. This place needs an uprising. Were it up to me, I’d be fomenting revolution.

    There’s a lot of money at the top in Honduras, but most of it never makes it down to where it counts. It’s nice that the international community is here with all our dreams of helping Hondurans be less poor, but at what point do wealthy Hondurans and the government start assuming more responsibility for that? And what’s it going to take to get all the mistreated and neglected people down below to start making more noise about all of that?

    When the revolution does come, it’s nice to think that at least a few more of them now know to turn their backs to the sun when documenting it all in photos. When they’re ready to foment, I hope they call me – I've got all kinds of communications tips on that front.

Bringing a dog home from Honduras: Hard lessons learned

 

  Maybe one day you’re going to find yourself somewhere in Honduras thinking, hey, here I am in a country with way too many sick, underfed dogs, and I’d like to find at least one of them a great new home in Canada.

    And with that one little thought, the grand and costly adventure will have begun.

    I must admit, bringing White Dog home seemed destined. We've been feeding a variety of dogs during our two-plus years in Copan Ruinas, but White Dog appeared out of nowhere for the first time a couple of days before one of my daughters and her husband arrived for a visit in January, and the three of them instantly hit it off. Unlike a lot of the other street dogs here, who really love their wandering lives, White Dog seemed done with the entire business and eager to shift into a more domesticated life. Why not, we all said.

   So I went on-line and started looking for information on airline web sites. United is the airline we’ve used the most for flights back and forth to Canada since we came here, and information on the United site about the company’s PetSafe program seemed pretty thorough. It looked like the rate for a dog of White Dog’s size in the (giant) kennel required by the airline would be around $289 – pricey, I thought, but not impossible. United also got back to my email requests for more information, unlike Delta and American Airlines.

   United’s initial information was wrong, mind you, and I would eventually come to see that what was on their site wasn't even remotely thorough and in fact was downright misleading. But in those halcyon days of January when I did not yet know just how little I knew, choosing United seemed logical.

   I quickly learned that while there was quite a bit of information about PetSafe on the site, getting particulars for booking a specific dog on a specific plane was like pulling teeth. I didn’t really get why it was going so badly until I got in touch with a Facebook acquaintance who’d been through the experience of shipping a dog from Honduras to Canada, who told me Honduras requires the use of animal brokers. He sent me a contact for Rex Internacional, which United uses.

   In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to the teeny notice on the United PetSafe rate page that says “Note: Additional fees may apply in countries that require the use of animal brokers.” But isn’t that just always the way with hindsight? At any rate, never in my wildest imaginings would a passing aside about “additional fees” lead me to think that it would increase the rate quoted on the United site by 140%.

   But I’m getting ahead of myself. While waiting for more information on how to ship White Dog, I got started on the veterinary processes. We live in Copan Ruinas, which has no veterinarian, so the first step was an eight-hour return bus ride for me and White Dog to San Pedro Sula to visit a vet who knew all the steps to meet airline requirements. Canada’s requirements turned out to be surprisingly simple - a current rabies vaccination – but the airline needed things like a health certificate dated within 10 days of your flight and an export permit (really?) from the Honduran government.

   Price for vet services, export permit, and one month of antibiotic treatment for a tick disease we discovered White Dog had: $250. Add another $28 for the round trip bus ride to and from San Pedro, as I had to buy White Dog her own bus ticket. But hey, I was still thinking that the airfare was $289, so I remained calm.

   Now, the kennel. The airline wants the dog to be comfortable, so you need to pick a kennel according to a set of measurements based on the dog’s size. I thought we could save $200 for a new kennel by having my youngest daughter bring a used kennel with her when she came to visit us this month, not fully understanding just how big and awkward a Kennel 500 can be. We could have gotten away with the smaller Kennel 400, as it turned out, but at least White Dog now has a doggie condo to relax in for her flight.

   As things went, that too was a much more hassle-filled endeavor than I had anticipated, and Houston airport actually threatened my daughter with having to pay $200 to ship the kennel here because it was oversize (a kinder agent stepped in and resolved the crisis). I make a point of not saying “You would think” anymore, because that’s a very clear sign that a person is not adjusting to Honduran culture, but really, wouldn’t you think United might consider renting the damn kennels?

   Anyway. So early March comes and I'd now been in email correspondence for six weeks with the Rex Internacional and United folk, and had had the dog vaccinated, treated for her tick disease, organized the kennel journey and booked our own flights back to Canada. I send another email to Rex Internacional confirming that all is a go, and they finally tell me the total price: $805. It is not overly dramatic to say that I thought I was going to throw up. I mean, not only is that way, way higher than my daughter or I were planning for, it is a truly embarrassing amount for two volunteers to pay to bring a dog home from an impoverished country where $805 is many people’s annual income. It is almost $200 more than our own tickets cost us.
   Not only that, but they would only fly her to Vancouver, not Victoria. So we would now be arriving at midnight in Vancouver with a dog, unable to use our tickets to Victoria and with no transport to get the three of us to Victoria. 

   But by this time, almost 2 months had passed since White Dog started hanging around. We had moved into full-on domestication. This dog was a pet, pure and simple. I couldn't have lived with myself if we’d just abandoned her to her Copan fate at that point. We were totally over a barrel.

   I did my best, sending Rex Internacional a note that made it very clear that we were devastated and angry. I CC’d high-ups in United. It helped a little: Rex acknowledged they’d made an error of $110 by charging us for 2 dogs in the kennel (even though I’d filled out a form stating there was only one). But United didn’t budge. I sulked for a few days, but then confirmed with my daughter that we were all still committed, and booked the flight for $695. Which is still more than our own tickets.

   Add it all up and we’re basically at $1,000. The kennel ended up costing $40 for my daughter to bring as a second piece of baggage. Plus it got cracked somewhere along the way, so add in maybe another $30 to fix it. And then there will be the cost of private transport for getting the dog and her condo-kennel to San Pedro, as not even the most tender-hearted bus driver is going to let us lug that huge thing onto a crowded local bus. I’m not even sure it would fit through the door.

   Call me suspicious, but I have a strong feeling that the costs aren't fully tallied yet. I've been joking with my daughter that we should rename the new family member Golden Dog. Thanks to Facebook, though, we do now have transport to Victoria after a kind-hearted person who I don't even know that well said she was going to be in Vancouver on April 2 and would come pick us up. 

    But it’s all just money, isn’t it? White Dog only has to make that little extended-paw gesture of hers that always makes me smile, and all is forgiven. As for Rex Internacional and United Airlines – well, that might take a little longer.  

The wheels on the bus go round and round: Tips for a better Honduran bus experience

   

Spend enough hours on a Honduran long-distance bus and you will end up boarding them with the seasoned eye of a veteran seat-assessor, able to take in the available options at a glance and make the best choice with barely a moment of additional anxiety to the passengers jamming in behind you. Having been up, down and around this country on all manner of public transportation, here are my recommendations for how it's done:

1. Do I have control of the window? Unless you're on a first-class, air-conditioned bus - in which case none of this matters, because you'll have an assigned seat - this is perhaps the most important issue for your comfort. Without control of the window, you forfeit your right to get a little cool air in your face during a hot time of year or stop the passing storm from pouring in on you in more inclement times of year. Plus you're not going to be able to buy snacks and drinks from the vendors who come rushing up whenever the bus stops if you're not near a window that opens.

2. Is this seat back in good shape? There are a lot of busted seat backs in the lower classes of Honduran buses, and if you don't check this out you could find yourself slowly sinking into a reclining position no matter how many times you try to get the damn seat to stay straight up and down.

3. Did I just pick a seat over the wheel well? Classic error - you see the empty seat at the back, you rush to grab it, only to discover that the wheel well is right below your feet and you will now have to sit with your knees at your chin for several hours.

4. Did somebody spill something on this part of the floor? Unless you want your shoes lightly stuck to the floor and making that strange ripping noise every time you adjust them, stay away from any seat that appears to have borne the consequences of a sugary drink having been spilled two seats further up and then spread through a thousand or so stops and starts of the bus.

5. Am I sitting near anyone who gets motion sick? I don't know about you, but being too close to someone who is barfing makes me want to barf, too. Sniff the air. Look for evidence of someone clutching a small plastic bag and looking embarrassed. Pay attention to who takes up the bus guy's offer of plastic bags and move seats accordingly.

6. Is my seatmate a Honduran male? It could be that any male seatmate is a problem on this front. Men sit like it's their right to take up as much space as their body feels it needs, and never mind that you are crouching on the edge of your seat trying to avoid having your legs touch as the guy inevitably lets his knees swing open as wide as he likes and claims not just the arm rest but three more inches beyond it. Women, on the other hand, seem much more aware of sharing the common space fairly.

7. Does this mom with her baby in fact have 3 more children in a seat behind her? Children have zero rights on a Honduran bus, which means that if Mom has planted her kids in another seat and the time comes that the seat is needed for another adult passenger, those kids will now have no option but to stand in the tiny slip of space between the mom and the next seat. If you happen to be sitting next to her, count on having a child standing in front of you, too.

8. Am I better off with the seat big enough for 2.5 people that will end up holding 3, or the one big enough for 1.5 people that will end up holding 2? You're on your own for this one. I ask myself the same question every time I get on the refitted school buses that have this seat arrangement, and I've yet to figure out the right answer. I suspect there isn't one. 

Crack down on crime where it counts

  This morning's paper brought news of a tiny baby found abandoned at the foot of a tree in a village not far from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.  Next to him was a bag full of baby products - a bottle of milk, diapers, talcum powder, a bib - and a note asking whoever found the baby to look after him well. A neighbour saw the news about the foundling and called in to report the young mother who had abandoned the baby, and now she's going to prison.
    Oh, come on. In the same paper, there were stories about 14 people who had been fatally shot in Honduras the day before, including two in wheelchairs. Another story listed details of four massacres that had happened since November in which 17 people had been killed.
    With the exception of one of the massacres, there are no suspects in any of the murders. And if things go the way they usually seem to go here, there never will be.
     Elsewhere in the morning paper, the Ministry of Social Security reported a theft of 23 million lempiras (about $1.2 million) resulting from "ghost" companies billing for non-existent services. Meanwhile, an editorial noted that the number of women murdered in Honduras - which has the highest homicide rate in the world - has increased by more than 18 per cent in the last two years.
   And the new president's "firm hand" is coming down on desperate, impoverished moms who don't have the resources to look after one more child?
    I don't want to knock President Juan Orlando Hernandez for trying to get a handle on crime in the country. But what I've seen so far is a lot of busy-work at police road stops - cars pulled over, buses stopped and passengers ordered to disembark for inspections - while the fundamental problems continue unchecked.

    Honduras doesn't just have a lot of murders, it has an unbelievable number of assassinations - murders for pay. It's not just random violence happening here, it's executions. While the Direccion de Estadistica Policia Nacional has no data available for 55 per cent of the 7,500 or so murders committed in the country in a typical year (quite an appalling problem all on its own), at least 30 per cent of those that have been classified are listed as "retribution killings by hit men." (http://latam-threads.blogspot.com/2012/01/violence-in-honduras.html). 

    One of the most horrendous of the massacres on that list in today's paper was one such killing, and it happened just five kilometres away from our town of Copan Ruinas two weeks ago. Two young men chopped up five members of a family with machetes, reportedly in retribution for a murder a year ago. Two of those killed were children, one age six and the other a mere 11 months old. 

    What did Juan Orlando have to say about that? Nothing. He did give a speech yesterday in which he mentioned that the level of insecurity in the country is intolerable, but neither he nor any other political leader - or police chief, or church leader, or anyone beyond some poor, sobbing relative - ever comments on specific murders, or proposes something more substantial than an increase in police roadside checks and a few more heavily armed military guys standing around here and there.

    It's not just the murders that are weighing this country down. I chatted with my taxi driver in San Pedro Sula this morning about "war taxes," the money the gangs extort from small businesses in exchange for not killing them. The gangs operate at every spot where the taxis queue up for passengers - outside the malls, at the bus terminal, at designated areas in the city centre. A typical San Pedro taxi pays the equivalent of $90 a month in war tax, my driver told me.

    A bus driver on one of the long-distance routes told me his company pays $50 a week for every bus in its fleet, all of it due and payable every Monday at the San Pedro main terminal. All in, some $27 million a year is extorted solely from the transportation sector. The driver says all the stores working out of the bus terminal also have to pay the gangs. The gangs are a bitter fact of life for tens of thousands of hard-working, honest people trying to scratch out a living. 

    So yes, Mr. President, spread a little of that firm hand around. Your citizenry urgently needs the help. But get real. Get focused. And as for mothers too poor to raise their own children, how about you give those ones a hand up?

The end

   

The pool swim with the Angelitos kids this past weekend had a certain poignancy about it. I expect there will be one more and then we'll be gone, back to Canada to start whatever the next adventure will be.
    We always knew there would be an end to our time with the orphans. I imagine it kept the relationship at something of an arm's length from the beginning, knowing that there was no future together that we were building toward. A little detachment has proven to be a good thing already, what with six of the kids having vanished from our lives during these two years, whisked off to what we will have to hope are better lives with no hint to us (or them, I suspect) that the next time we came to the hogar, they would be gone.
     Still, it's a strange thing to walk away from children after all this time. Just because I say I have guarded my heart doesn't mean I actually have. It's not love that we have between us - really, it would be irresponsible and unethical to seek love from children when you know from the start that there's a time limit. But they have come to count on us, and we have come to feel responsible for them. And that's its own kind of love.
    I think we may have changed each other's lives through all of this. By my rough calculations we have spent 300 hours together, mostly at the pool but also shopping for clothes, kicking the ball around in that empty dirt lot above Angelitos, buying sno-cones in the park. We spent one memorable afternoon at a little carnival last year, sweltering in the heat and surrounded by crowds of other children from poor families who saw the gringos buying kids fair rides and drew close in hopes that some tickets might come their way, too.
    They have learned to swim. I have learned to child-wrangle in two languages. In the early weeks, I cried for them, but time passed and I saw that they didn't see themselves as deprived. They are, of course: stunted from inadequate nutrition; behind in school; virtually no medical care; no champions in their lives to step in when things get rough. But that describes so many of the impoverished children in Honduras that I guess the Angelitos kids just feel like everybody else.
    I have seen no obvious signs of abuse at the orphanage, although I suspect that some of the impatient, frazzled staff - most of them broken single moms with no place else to go and slim hopes of getting paid for their work - do hit the kids sometimes. Certainly one broken mom is not sufficient for 14 robust children, especially the crazy little boys who find all kinds of trouble to get up to in their boredom. Dona Daisy, the woman who owns the orphanage, always talks about the need to find "Christian people" who will take that round-the-clock job out of the goodness of their hearts, but I stand inside that dark place with all its bad smells and endless heaps of dirty laundry and think, Who could ever be good enough to stay here for any longer than they had to?
     We've tried to make the children's home better in our time here. There's a water system now, a better floor, a wood stove that doesn't poison the air with its smoke, beds and mattresses and sheets for all. But with its hopeless and haphazard management and the complete lack of transparency in how donor dollars are used, Angelitos will always be something of a disaster. My long-term hopes are all pinned on Emily, the young American whose Casita Copan will one day be a replacement for Angelitos. Her dream is big enough for the 14 Angelitos kids, too, although she'd be in for the fight of her life.
     I don't expect the younger children to remember me for long. I've seen for myself how quickly they forget others who were once in their lives, the price of having grown up with a string of well-meaning but ultimately transient foreigners passing through your doors with their gifts and their cuddles and their tearful goodbyes. They hug easily, these children, but I fear it's because they know to get it while the getting's good, and that nothing lasts.
     The older ones, though - they'll remember. I've already talked to Rosario, the 9-year-old who I feel the most attachment to, about the little box that I'm going to buy her, and how I'll put my email inside it for the day when she wants to find me again. Hide it under your mattress, I told her, knowing how rapidly treasured things go missing in that place. When you're ready to come looking, I'll be there.
     If she could be tucked inside a kennel and whisked off to Canada as easily as the street dog we're bringing home for one of my daughters, I think I would be tempted. But of course, adopting from Honduras is nothing so easy as that, and in fact I'm already seven years past the age cutoff in the country anyway. She's the most independent minded (and stylish) of the Angelitos gang, and I am choosing to take that as a sign that she will be OK.
     "But who will take us to the pool when you're gone?" asked one of the girls, long gone now, when I first mentioned last year that our positions in Honduras weren't permanent. I think that will be the question on most of their minds when we do our final outing at the end of this month.
      I don't know, kids. Let's hope for other travellers with $30 jangling around in their pockets who want to make some children very, very happy. Let's hope that some of the wealthier Copan families wake up to the fact of all these poor kids right in their own community, and make a decision to bring some along next time they head to the pool.
    Let's just hope for the best. For all my little friends at Angelitos Felices, that's all I can do. 

Reconsidering Canada's prostitution laws: An opportunity to do so much better

We have until March 17 to give the federal government our opinion on laws around sex work, as the 3 major laws affecting adult, consenting sex workers were struck down in December as unconstitutional. 

Here are my answers, and I urge you to submit your own responses here,

Please don't make the mistake of thinking you don't know enough to respond. Just imagine that it's your sister, your mom, your little brother who is working in the industry, making a free choice as an adult (because nobody's talking about changing any laws that prevent violence, coercion, human trafficking or child exploitation - this consultation is strictly about the sale of sex between consenting adults). What would you want for them if this was their work? 

A group of sex workers and supporters have put together some guidelines for responding. I'd be happy to forward them to anyone who's interested. The group would also love to have copies of people's responses. But with or without guidelines, just give these questions to your head and heart to mull over and see what comes out. 

Do you think that purchasing sexual services from an adult should be a criminal offence? Should there be any exceptions? Please explain.

I support decriminalizing the purchase of sexual services from a consenting adult. I am a committed 57-year-old Canadian feminist and journalist who has come to this conclusion after many years of working with and getting to know adult sex workers, whose life experiences with Canada’s criminalized system have shown me that such laws not only do not reduce the demand for sexual services, but inadvertently make the work considerably more dangerous for the people that the law is supposedly trying to protect.

Better minds than mine could write a treatise on the nature of the human sex drive, but after so many failed efforts in so many countries over so many generations to stop sex work through criminalization, it ought to be clear that criminalization does not work as a deterrent to stop the buying of sexual services. What it does is push this work even deeper into the shadows – into the dark places where no one goes, into a stigmatized, misunderstood world that is practically custom-made to cover up the crimes of the predators who end up there in search of victims.

I have learned from my sex-work acquaintances that the majority of the people who buy sex are not horrible,sick predators looking to cause harm. But because they have to work in shadowy isolation, the conditions are perfect for predators who do hunt among the workers not for sexual services, but for vulnerable, stigmatized people to rape, beat and murder.

Were the purchase and sale of adult,consensual sexual services decriminalized, workers would finally be protected by all the systems Canada has in place to keep us safe from predators: Well-lit work areas; police support; the safety of having other people working nearby; the right to report crimes or suspicious behaviour without being judged, mistreated, ignored and shunned. Decriminalization need not mean that we condone the purchase of sex, just that Canadians accept the reality that criminal measures merely increase risk and misery for those who work in the industry. Even among those who are exploited, victimized and coerced into sex work, the criminalization of this work just adds more suffering. It fixes nothing while causing immense harm. That is bad law.

Do you think that selling sexual services by an adult shouldbe a criminal offence? Should there be any exceptions? Please explain.

I support decriminalizing the sale of sexual services between consenting adults. In Canada we seem to want to view sex workers as both victims and criminals, putting them forward in the public eye as vulnerable, desperate people who need our help to flee the horrors of the industry (whether they want to or not), while at the same time targeting them for criminal charges should they dare to resist our need to “save” them.

Many of the same comments I made in the previous question apply to this one as well. Criminalizing the sale of sexual services increases the danger and the stigma for those who work in the industry. It pushes workers into dark places to avoid being criminally charged.They avoid calling police when they do encounter predatory clients, because police might just as easily decide to charge the worker once they arrive at the scene. It lends a strong air of “well, they deserved it” in the event that violence is committed against them, a moral attitude that dramatically affects sex workers when they seek help at the hospital, try to find housing, look for mainstream work. Society sits in severe judgment of sex workers, and I strongly believe that criminalization feeds this judgment while at the same time doingnothing to improve the situation for anybody – the sex workers, theneighbourhoods where outdoor sex takes place, the exploited children who desperately need targeted, wise services to turn their lives in a different direction.

For me, this is also an issue of workers’ rights. The sale of sex is legal in Canada. It’s the marketing, location and income from sex work that is illegal. This criminalization shuts a whole class of Canadian workers out of all the normal workplace protections. They are denied the same level of police protection (or would at least perceive it that way); they cannot access our court system for a dispute over a contract or to bring a case for sexual harassment. There are no employment standards that apply to them. Decriminalization will not fix every problem in the sexindustry, but it will at least open the door for people to pursue the same courses for legal action and seek the same level of rights protection that other Canadian workers enjoy.

If you support allowing the sale or purchase of sexual services, what limitationsshould there be, if any, on where or how this can be conducted? Please explain.

I support the creation of legal workplaces for consenting adult sex workers. These sites should be treated like any other business and regulated municipally through zoning bylaws in terms of location, and subject to the same employment standards that any Canadian workplace is subject to. For the safety of the workers, these sites should not be banished to industrial parks or “red light districts” where they are out of sight of mainstream society, but rather mixed in to commercial areas and regulated in ways that ensure low public profile. This is the way that many of Canada’s brothels operate now, in truth, as the clients of this business also prefer a low profile.

Canada’s bawdyhouse laws and related court rulings over the years have basically defined “bawdyhouse” to be any location where sex is bought and sold. They have been a failure by any definition, asthey have not curbed the sale of sex and have created a very dangerous work situation for those in the industry. The only achievement of the country’s bawdyhouse laws was to deny sex workers even the most basic protections of a typical workplace: A clean and pleasant place to work; shelter from the weather, the company of co-workers, people around you to respond in the event of something bad happening.

The issue of outdoor sex work is more complicated, as some people working outdoors are there because their profound personal problems – addictions, mental health issues, disabilities – prevent them from being able to work in an indoor venue. They also work outdoors because there are customers who want to be able to buy sex that way; curbing that desire will require an entirely different strategy than anything Canada has ever tried. The percentage of sex workers who work outdoors is small –estimates are around 10 per cent – but the outdoor stroll is definitely the“face” of sex work that people react most strongly to.

Outdoor work is definitely much more of a pressure point for a community, and is almost always where the violence happens for sex workers as municipalities try to push the “stroll” out of sight. While I sincerely hope legal, safe workplaces are coming for consenting adult sex workers, I fear pressure might increase to criminalize all outdoor work, a development that would put the most vulnerable outdoor workers at even greater risk. As Canada moves forward into what I hope will be enlightened policy around adult sex work, I think the issues of outdoor sex work should be separated out for further exploration and understanding, as my experience has been that the issues for the small minority of sex workers who work outdoors are completely different than those of the large majority who work indoors. This exploration must include study into the psychology of clients who prefer to buy from outdoor workers, because there will always be sellers if there continues to be buyers.

Do you think that it should be a criminal offence for a person to benefit economically from the prostitution of an adult?

I believe that a law that makes it a criminal offence to benefit economically from prostitution is far too broad to be effective, and has a negative impact on people who in no way are acting in a predatory manner by taking money from a sex worker. Canada does need a carefully considered law that prevents predators from forcing people into sex work in order to benefit from their earnings, but criminalizing the income of sex workers is not the way to achieve that.

While rarely used in Canada, the former law around “living off the avails” put people at risk of criminal charges just for accepting payment of any kind from a sex worker. Not only does that unfairly affect all the people a sex worker might choose to employ – a driver, for instance – but also relegates anyone who lives with or loves a sex worker to the category of  “pimp” under the law just by splitting the rent, food costs or other expenses with the sex worker. To criminalize the income from legal work is both fundamentally wrong and totally ineffective as a means of curbing the sex trade.

As noted, the law has not been used much in Canada. But its existence alone opens the door for harassment of sex workers and the people in their lives, as even a private romantic relationship is now open to police scrutiny. It is also an impossible law to administer fairly. With what is likely tens of thousands of Canadians working in the sex trade in Canada – making mortgage payments, buying groceries, paying car loans, payingfor daycare services for their children, eating at restaurants, hiringrenovation crews to redo the kitchen – the sheer volume of people benefiting economically from prostitution is enormous. And yet the impact of the law is only ever felt by those closest to the sex worker. Once more, that is bad law.

Are there any other comments you wish to offer to inform thegovernment’s response to the Bedford decision?

Please do not let the high emotion of the debatearound this issue affect your decisions when considering new laws for thebuying and selling of sex among consenting adults. So many people havesuffered, even lost their lives, because of Canada’s former laws aroundprostitution. Please do not let this become an issue of agreeing or disagreeingwith the idea of selling sexual services.

The sale of sex is not inherently violent. It is our laws that have actually created much of the risks in this work. Yes, the fight must continue to prosecute those who are violent, predatory, exploitive and coercive, and to protect underage children from exploitation. But we must stop this senseless application of law as a tool of morality - an approach that has caused great harm to many, many good people and virtually guarantees a continuation of the damaging stigma that shuts sex workers out of mainstream society.

The reality is that rightly or wrongly, thisindustry exists. I don’t know if its existence is inevitable, but I do know that 147 years of trying to stop it through criminalization has not worked – not in Canada, not in any country.  Canadahas a chance to do itself proud yet again and create a regulatory framework that is thoughtful, realistic and humane. 

In my room, and not that happy about it

   

  I know that after I've said a sad goodbye to the Comision de Accion Social Menonita and have returned to Canada, I will talk fondly to my friends about having had the amazing opportunity to travel around so much of Honduras through my work in all seven regions of CASM.

    But tonight I’m in a down-market hotel room in teeny La Campa, sitting under a hideous fluorescent doughnut light while dining on weird little coconut sticks I packed in my bag knowing that I’d be dead bored by Day 3 with the limited food selection here. There’s absolutely zilch on the 13-inch TV. I’m a very long bus ride away from home and am marking my 14^th day of out-of-town work in the last three and a half weeks.

    And I am not feeling the love.

    A job that involves travel sounds great until you actually have one. I remember having that same revelation as a newsroom manager in Victoria, when the excitement I felt at my first company trip to Toronto died quickly once I realized just how many hours are lost in transit, and how even a nice hotel room is a poor substitute for your own bed back home.

    At any rate, my Honduras travels don’t come with the option of a nice hotel room – partly because the little towns where CASM works simply don’t have such things, and partly because when you’re making $10,000 a year and paying much of the travel expenses out of your own pocket, you make very different choices.

    The rooms are never dirty, but they’re certainly basic. Some have hot showers; others have a cold-water pipe coming out of the wall. A few of the rooms have been unnerving, like the one in the Moskitia with its flimsy little push-button door lock and no one but me in the entire building most nights. There’s a place in Tocoa that I treasure because it has a small pool, a lot of TV channels and better internet than we’ve got at home, all for $22 a night. But that’s a rare thing.

    Then there’s the restaurant food. It gets tiresome pretty fast for a business traveller even when there are lots of places to choose from. But small-town Honduran food – well, just imagine eating the same meal three times a day for a week and you’ll get the picture. That’s why I packed the coconut sticks, along with 6 mandarin oranges and a small bag of apples. Bless those who can eat simply, but the tipico plate of beans, tortillas and spot of protein that a lot of Hondurans are completely content with as a steady diet just doesn’t do it for me this long into the gig.

    And even when I’m prepared to eat a plate of tipico, there are times when I have no idea where to find one. People who live in La Campa know that you walk down the dirt road to an unmarked house on the right and the woman there will serve you something, but I had no idea the first time I was here and basically lived on chips from the corner store. In the strange little town where I stay when in the Moskitia, nobody sells fruit or vegetables (that’s the case in La Campa, too), and access to a meal totally depends on whether Doña Doris is back from visiting her kids in La Ceiba and Doña Rosa isn’t too busy with her teaching.

    Then there are the bus rides. The shortest is four hours to San Pedro Sula, but most trips are closer to six hours. The monster trip is to Tocoa, where I’ll be going in another week – 10 hours. I’ve become a master at zoning out, and sometimes I even sleep if my knees aren’t jammed into the seat in front of me and the person next to me isn’t talking loudly on their cellphone, trying to soothe their baby while balancing an 8-year-old on their knee, or throwing up (surprising amount of motion sickness among Honduran bus riders).

    Yeah, yeah, I’m whining. Blame it on the coconut sticks. But as soon as I finish this post, I’m going to look at the video clips I got today of a solemn little group of La Campa Catholics enacting a ritual in honour of the patron saint of the town, Matthias, and I’ll probably feel all warm and fuzzy again thinking about all the things I’ve had the chance to see these past two years due to travelling the country for work.

    And then I’ll crawl into my plain but not uncomfortable bed, dim the fluorescent doughnut, and be one more day closer to going home.