Early intervention changes everything for children with disabilities, health challenges

Tytan Beckford's family had to make the horrific decision
to ampute part of Tytan's feet when he was born without
fibula in his legs.

  Gotta admit, it was kind of fun being back in reporter mode this summer as my partner Paul and I worked up a four-page newspaper supplement for Children's Health Foundation of Vancouver Island.

     The stories of families of children with disabilities can be hard to listen to, because nobody likes having to think of children experiencing the pain, surgeries, life limitations, and whirl of therapies that the kids we wrote about have had to face. Our own granddaughter was born right in the middle of the period when we were doing this work, and we couldn't help but imagine her in a similar situation with each and every heartbreaking interview.

Twins Nolan and Asher Trousdell on their way into Grade 1
this fall. Read the family blog at http://www.traceytrousdell.com/

 Yet the hope and determination of the families are what will stay with me. They get knocked down, but they get up again. They endure unbelievable amounts of stress, sadness, and wholesale disruption of their lives and dreams, yet they stand alongside their children and together, they make it work.

    I have new admiration for the dedicated people who work in the field of children's health and development, and new appreciation for the worth of these services - not only for the children whose lives are literally being turned around through early intervention, but for society as a whole. There's something magical about the ability of a brain of a young child to adapt to limitations and challenges, but making use of that magic is all about the right interventions in those early years from birth to age five.

     Early intervention not only changes the course of a child's life, it dramatically improves the chances that children can reach their potential in school, work, and life overall. Early intervention ensures we have active, healthy, and engaged citizens ready to build an even stronger future of British Columbia.

    The supplement is in today's Times Colonist, and you can read it here on the foundation's web site.

Hannah Harris, whose family spent a total of 115 nights
at Jeneece Place after Hannah and her twin sister Hailey
were born premature and with a long list of health
challenges. Read more about the Courtenay twins
on their mom Bonnie's blog at
http://b-hannahhailey.blogspot.com/p/hannah.html

Nicaragua: Developed but unequal

  It’s a typical Saturday afternoon at the flashy Metro Centro mall in Managua, Nicaragua, and the joint is jumping. As I watch a young barista crank out $4 iced cappuccinos at the Casa de Café kiosk, I find myself reflecting yet again on the mysterious phrase “developing country.”

  To those who don’t know this part of the world, the phrase suggests poverty and deprivation - chicken buses spilling over with skinny peasants making slow progress along dirt roads; neighbourhoods of rickety houses built from bamboo and banana leaves; poor people with seven or eight children scratching out meagre livings in tiny villages.

  Paul and I are just beginning our third posting as Cuso International volunteers in Central America. I suspect more than a few of our acquaintances back home imagine us living in just such a country. They assume that working with non-profit organizations in countries like Nicaragua and Honduras means giving up the good life.

  Yet the reality of life in a modern-day Central American city looks a lot like life in Canada in many ways. And the more time I spend in the south, the more my confusion grows over what we mean when we talk about development.

  All the stuff of “developed” countries like Canada exists here in Nicaragua, from beautifully maintained highways to fancy malls, big universities, well-equipped hospitals, 60-inch televisions, pricey iced-coffee makers, and luxury cars. The view from where I’m sitting as I write this is of attractive pink-plaster houses with immaculate gardens as far as the eye can see.

  But were I to walk a few blocks to the eight-lane highway that cuts through this part of town, I’d see a different view.

   I’d see wooden shacks with thin curls of smoke coming out from wood cooking fires inside. I’d see skinny dogs sleeping on dirt floors and families in worn hand-me-down clothes shipped in bales from the U.S., sitting in cheap plastic chairs in scrubby dirt yards. Employment is scarce and notoriously low-paid for families in those kinds of neighbourhoods.

  So the real problem is not a lack of modern conveniences, it’s that so many people who live here can’t access them. The problem is not a lack of development, but of inequality – both in terms of income and in having the political clout to be able to change that reality. The World Bank rates Nicaragua as the second-poorest nation in Latin America and the Caribbean, but that poverty definitely isn’t shared equally among the country’s six million citizens.

  The bad roads, rickety houses, and impoverished families that come to mind for those who haven’t been to Central America do still prevail in many rural areas. Rural development efforts tend to concentrate along three lines: Helping people improve food security through better agricultural practices and diversity; encouraging people to engage more effectively with their governments; and helping communities organize themselves better to prevent or respond to emergencies such as floods, mud slides, drought and other natural disasters. (I haven’t seen much development work focused on the needs of the urban poor.)

  It’s important work, of course.

  Better and more diverse agricultural yields can mean the difference between life and death for subsistence farmers, as can better logging practices that stop the deforestation that turn a regular rain storm into a devastating flood or slide. Democracy is still a fragile concept in Central America, and building a more informed and engaged citizenry is an integral part of sustaining that. Development work that improves the lives of women and girls is fundamental to improving a country’s economic performance.

  But can those efforts change the structural inequalities, cultural habits, and harmful government policies that feed the growing gap between rich and poor around the world? I don’t know. Like so any other global problems, it’s complicated, and there are many competing interests at stake – most notably, the interests of consumers in wealthy countries like my own.

  For instance, Central American farmers wouldn’t be nearly so poor if they got paid more for their crops. (The price people pay for the coffee beans in their iced cappuccino is about 100 times more than what the farmer got for growing them.)

  Workers in the giant maquilas that make clothing, auto parts, and electronics for the world would benefit immensely from higher wages. The countries that host those maquilas would have more money for infrastructure, education, health care, and social programs if the multinationals that owned the factories paid taxes, like they would have to do if the factories were located in wealthier countries.

  But in the global market, consumers demand low prices. Were the government of Nicaragua to take a stand on behalf of factory workers and farmers, corporations doing business here would instantly start scoping out even poorer countries where they could set up shop. The resulting loss of jobs and markets would be disastrous for the country.

  And consumers around the world would barely blink, because it’s our buying habits (which in turn are fuelled by our own falling purchasing power as the income gap grows in our own countries) that have led to this situation.

  What to do? Pay attention. Reject easy labels that hide what the real problems are. Come see for yourself. No country’s problems are ever as simple as they appear from a distance, nor are any of us as different from each other as we might believe.

Thanks for supporting our work in Central America with a donation to Cuso International! Here's our fundraising site. 

The life of an urban nomad

   

 This new "homeless" life that my partner Paul and I now live is marked by many moves during our times back in Canada, when we shuffle like urban nomads from one housesit to another. Since returning to Vancouver Island five months ago, we have relocated 10 times.
     It stressed me out when we first started doing it last spring after returning from two years in Honduras. But do anything for long enough and a routine seemingly always starts to emerge. We've now grown quite adept at constant relocation.
      We've been doing Cuso International volunteer work in Central America for most of the last three years, first in Honduras and now for shorter postings in Nicaragua. While we still have a small storage locker here in Victoria, we've mostly given up all our stuff so that we're free to go wherever a posting or a whim takes us.
     The periods in the south are relatively stable in terms of housing; we rent a place to live while we're there and stay put for the duration. It's the periods when we're back on the Island that are the most nomadic, as housesitting for people on summer vacation generally means stays of no more than two to four weeks in any one place.
     When we make our big moves between Canada and Central America - which we're set to do again in mid-September - we have two gigantic suitcases and two large backpacks to hold our worldly belongings. But we try to keep things tighter for the "local" moves, using only the backpacks and whatever else we can stuff in the car. (We've figured out how to live without permanent housing, but not without a car.)
      What I've most noticed about the new life is the need for a flexible wardrobe. Gone are the days when I would stand in front of a roomy closet contemplating which fashionable outfit to put on that day. I need clothes that will stuff into a backpack and come out looking not too disastrously wrinkled, and that serve me equally well for schlubbing through an ordinary day and on the rare occasions when I have to look professional or fancy. I need simple shoes that go with anything, because the bottom compartment of my backpack holds only three or four pair.
      While housesits are typically all-inclusives in terms of household goods like cutlery, bedding, pots and pans and such, there are still a remarkable number of things that the modern nomad needs to bring along.
      I have a small backpack filled with nothing but electronics chargers, battery chargers, and specialized cords for all our cameras, phones, e-books, and music players, for instance. We also pack a big blue tote full of basic items like peanut butter, olive oil, breakfast cereal and various other goods that can't be fully consumed in the course of a single housesit, and quite an alarming number of personal-grooming products.
     Then there are the books we're reading, the notebooks we're currently using for work (and the three or four others that you might need because you took notes in them for previous work); the random collection of "important papers"; at least a little jewelry, although it sure is prone to getting tangled and lost in this new lifestyle; the laptops, iPads and external hard drives; and whatever else didn't fit in our backpacks. We've also got two bicycles, but I'm in the habit of riding mine over to wherever we're headed just to relieve some of the packing pressure.
      Our rule is that whatever we're taking can't be more than one carload, and must require no more than two trips out to the car to carry it all into the new place. Otherwise, I think you could go quite mad just from the process of moving house so often.
     This new life has taught me a great deal about what really matters to me in terms of my living situation. Should a time come when we settle down in one place again, I will shop out housing options with much more insight into what makes me happy.
     For example, I now know I have a strong preference for houses that face southwest and have light flooding in through many windows. I need an outside space - not big, but sunny and private, with at least a few flower pots to tend.
      I need to be in a neighbourhood that has a decent grocery store within walking distance and an assortment of recreational options - pleasant roads leading off in all directions for cycling, maybe a beach, nice walks, birding options - close at hand. I need a decent internet connection and a comfortable place to play my accordion, ideally in a closed-off room where I don't have to feel self-conscious about interrupting other people's peaceful reveries.
     I need my own music playing on a decent sound system, which is why the little Bose bluetooth speaker we bought last summer has become one of our most precious possessions. And for at least some part of every year, I need my house to be located not too far from wherever my children and grandchildren are, because being able to hang out with them definitely makes me happy. (I also need my almost-90-year-old mother to continue welcoming two disruptive house guests who arrive regularly on her doorstep to seek shelter in gaps between housesits.)
     When those conditions are met, I'm happy.
     I thought I would miss having my own art on the walls. But I don't. I wondered if it would drive me crazy to have to do a wild search through every unfamiliar kitchen drawer whenever I needed a spoon or a whisk or a bottle opener. But I've gotten used to it. I wouldn't have imagined I could handle having all my clothes in a messy pile on top of my backpack due to the absence of closet space and empty dressers in other people's houses. But now I barely notice.
     "Flexible and adaptable" - the motto of the Cuso volunteer, and now the watchwords of our lives. Most days it's a pretty good life.

Thanks for supporting our work in Central America with a donation to Cuso International! Here's our fundraising site. 

Cue the triumphal chorus: Amnesty International passes policy supporting decriminalization of sex work

    This is an amazing day for the sex workers' rights movement with the news that Amnesty International has approved its draft policy supporting decriminalization of adult sex work.
     "What will it all mean?" asked one of my friends. I admit to not being sure what it will change in the immediate future. But as a symbol, it's significant when the world's most recognized human rights organization acknowledges that criminalizing sex work violates the rights (and threatens the lives) of sex workers.
    I've had the good fortune of getting to know a lot of sex workers over the last two decades, so for me it hasn't been a stretch to understand that criminalizing sex work increases the dangers, the sense of isolation and the stigma for those who work in the industry. It sorts sex workers into a different category of human - one who lives and works alongside the rest of us every day, providing us with services that we want, yet is denied the most basic rights that all of us enjoy.
    If this was a question of a particular race or economic class being discriminated against in our own countries, we'd have been all over it decades ago. But it's about sex workers, and that subject apparently really weirds us out. So we have shamefully let this disgrace continue much longer than a civilized society ought to permit.
    Criminalizing sex work shuts workers out of civil measures like employment tribunals and contract law. It relegates them to work in the shadows by denying them safe, legal places to work. It leaves them to the whims of police, who will be free to use their own discretion in deciding whether to treat the workers with respect or as lower life forms who they can feel free to abuse.
     In many countries, including Canada, criminalization denies sex workers the right to work together, and never mind that there's a mountain of evidence and a whole lot of logical thinking to tell us that isolating people in their work puts them at greater risk for all kinds of bad things.
     Around the world, major organizations like the World Health Organization and the United Nations have already endorsed decriminalization after their own careful investigations. Some might even argue that Amnesty International was late to the game, given all the research and reports that have stated over and over again that nothing is improved for sex workers or society by criminalizing the industry.
     Yet we were almost sidetracked by an open letter signed by anti-sex-work supporters in the runup to the Amnesty International vote, accusing the organization of betraying its principles and siding with "pimps." We were almost sidetracked by movie stars like Meryl Streep and Lena Dunham, who signed that petition and significantly added to the level of media hype and misinformation that followed.
     People actually gave credence to the uninformed musings of celebrities over two years of thoughtful investigation by Amnesty in drafting its policy. (Here's a great video from Amnesty on how that public battle all shook down, and that highlights the many ways that opponents used misinformation to try to create a backlash against Amnesty.)
    As the British might say,  I was gob-smacked by that turn of events. But I suppose I am grateful for it, too, because it reinforced that those who oppose sex work as morally wrong are fully prepared to sacrifice sex workers' safety and rights if that's what it takes to make their case.
      They believe that their need to hate sex work trumps workers' needs for safer workplaces, fair treatment by police and courts, and the basic human right to live equal among us. I've suspected that's what they believed for a while now, but their hysterical misinformation campaign against Amnesty was the confirmation.
      Will any of them rethink their positions now that one more respected organization has done its homework around sex work? I don't understand their way of thinking at all, so can't predict. There's something about the issue that seems to blind otherwise thoughtful people to common sense.
     And those who are still on the fence are legion. Many excuse themselves for not taking a position because the issue is "just too complex" and they don't have time to think about it. (What, people should die and suffer because you can't be bothered to learn enough to form an opinion?)
     But increasingly I am feeling the power of a global movement pushing for change. Maybe Amnesty's support will be a defining moment for busting through the general population's apathy on this issue.
     Anyway. My biggest hug to Amnesty. Stay strong, you guys. You're on the side of the angels on this one.

This good read on Vice summarizes much of the Amnesty battle. 

A good Q&A with Amnesty about its decision, particularly useful for its clarity around difference between decrim and legalization, and that you can support decriminalizing adult, consensual sex work while still being vehemently opposed to sex trafficking and exploitation. 

And if you're all cool on this subject and want a good belly laugh, check out this parody of the moment that "sexwork exclusionary radical feminists" - SWERFs - learn of Amnesty's decision.
     

The day I interviewed to be a sex worker

   

One summer day when I was a young reporter in Kamloops, my bosses at the newspaper sent me off to pretend I wanted to get hired as a lingerie model.

    The advertising department at the paper had been running classified ads seeking young women interested in working as lingerie models. The paper wanted the advertising revenue, but was worried the real nature of the business was prostitution. So they sent me off to pretend to be a job applicant so I could report back to them, a task that I accepted without hesitation.

     The interview was in a hotel room at The Dome, a fairly popular place in mid-1980s Kamloops. I can’t remember what I wore. An average man of average age – 35, maybe, with the everyman feel of someone who, like myself, had known life in a B.C. resource town – invited me to sit down. A few minutes later, a woman of about the same age joined us.

    My managers back at the paper had sent me to the job interview in the company of a male reporter, who was to park outside and be ready to save me from whatever darkness might lie within. This made me laugh then and now, although I do appreciate that my bosses at least wanted somebody to witness me disappearing behind the door where unnamed depravity was possibly lurking.

    In fact, the job interview was notable for its complete ordinariness. The man didn’t seem concerned that I had never worked as a lingerie model, and talked about how my job would be to go to private parties - some of them in hotel rooms - where I would model lingerie to potential buyers and be paid a commission.

    We got to the point where we had said pretty much all there is to say about lingerie modelling, but the feeling of an elephant in the room just kept getting bigger. I saw that it was going to be up to me to cut to the chase. I asked if there was an opportunity to make additional money selling something more than lingerie.

    The man and woman who were interviewing me both let out these huge sighs of relief, and instantly relaxed into  much more personable, jokey versions of their previous selves.  Yes, yes, exactly, the man enthused to me – I was welcome to sell much more than lingerie. Once that door shut between me and the lingerie enthusiast and the big wide world, he said, the two of us were free to explore any opportunities we wanted.

    The interview went on for probably an hour, and got a lot more comfortable for all concerned once we got past the lingerie cover story. As we wrapped up, the man told me I would have to come back the next day and take my clothes off in front of the woman, who would verify that I had no "huge scars" or obvious disfigurement. The man reassured me that as far as he could tell, I almost certainly would get the job. I left the hotel room feeling strangely exhilarated.

     I never returned for the second interview, although I’ve always liked to think that if I had, I could have had that job. My bosses were waiting for me the second I got back to the office, and I'll never forget the riveted looks on their faces as I recounted my interview. They hung on every word. I came to see that verifying the legitimacy of a lingerie seller might not have been their only motive for sending me on the assignment.

    I never went undercover again in my journalism career. It’s a fairly dishonest way to land a story, and I frown on it other than for the rare stories that simply can’t be told without subterfuge. 

    I suppose that might be why the story of my sex-work interview has gone unwritten until now. Or perhaps I simply had to grow old enough not to care that I might hurt my former bosses' feelings by revealing that what was most striking to me about that notable day was the hungry looks on their faces as they listened to me. I think I learned something new about men that day. 

    I trust no reader will take this anecdote of mine to mean that I “know what it’s like to be a sex worker” or something insane like that. There is much more to sex work than a job interview. I will leave it to my many brilliant and fascinating friends who really do work in the industry to tell those stories.

    All I'm saying is that one time maybe 30 years ago now, I did a job interview with a couple of people trying to set up an escort agency in Kamloops. And I’m still pleased that I nailed it. 

Catch the video on sex workers' rights that I put together in conjunction with Peers Victoria for the June 13 Day of Solidarity for sex workers. 

Who you gonna call? Fact Checkers

The Washington Post is doing some great work these days with their Fact Checker feature, which is digging into all kinds of "statistics" being thrown around out there to see where the figures come from and whether there's any truth to them. Think of it as the rhetoric version of that TV show Mythbusters.

Today's myth-busting was around the "fact" that 300,000 U.S. children are at risk of sexual exploitation. Take a look at how they tested those figures and what they found out - fascinating stuff, and all of it underlining that we need to be very, very careful in deciding what to believe when topics are highly emotional and potentially divisive. That old adage about believing half of what you see and none of what you hear has never been truer.

Inflated human trafficking statistics serve nobody

     Found myself making a long, ranty comment on a Facebook thread this morning and realized, hey, that could be a blog post. Those of us who write for food appreciate writing that lends itself to more than one application. 

     So here's the article that started everything, a Washington Post piece on the vast and profoundly misleading inflation of human-trafficking figures around the world, and why that has happened. 

     Posting it on Facebook brought out some interesting comments from people I don't usually interact with, but in the end I feel like we had the chance for a good conversation, each of us writing in our little boxes one after the other. Here's the thread if you want to take a look at how it went. 

     Talk of human trafficking has become something of a flash point for me in the last couple of years, as it was wrongly used and amply abused to justify the terrible injustice enacted against adult sex workers last year in Canada when their customers were criminalized for the first time in the country's history. I am all about rights for sex workers, and it has been devastating to see the number of otherwise thoughtful Canadians who can't get beyond the word "trafficked" to consider the actual impact of our poorly considered laws on the lives of tens of thousands of rational, informed and unvictimized Canadian adults earning a living in the sex industry. 

     Somewhere around the 4th-comment mark in the Facebook thread, I weighed back in with these comments below. Would love to keep this conversation going, so I hope you'll share your own thoughts on this. 

Even when you look at what drives human trafficking, it's largely the demands of the developed world for cheap goods and services. You'll hear some people going on about the maquilas in Central America, for instance, but who do we think those internationally owned clothing factories are making clothes for?? In countries like Nicaragua and Honduras, where there are loads of maquilas, people there are actually forbidden from buying those clothes, made by them in their own country!

      Nobody can get snippety about issues like human trafficking without fully understanding that our easy way of life totally depends on the labour of poor people. Like everything else in this world, it's all about demand. As long as a market exists for something, there will be people somewhere who will have to do the work of that. We can't morally object to that fact while at the same time happily enjoy the products of that labour. 

     And we are way beyond boycotts of one product or another - the labour of poor people is completely integrated into the lifestyle of North Americans, from the clothing we wear to the vehicles we drive, food we eat, cost of our cellphone service. And that's not even counting the labours of poor people from other lands in our own countries - the farm workers, construction workers, nannies, etc, legal and illegal. The people who we have decided should live by different rules than the rest of us in the same country because we want to reap the benefits from cheaper labour right here at home. 

     Meanwhile, poor people of the world would be completely hooped if the developed world suddenly decided to quit exploiting them and close down all the international operations and genuinely crack down on illegal migration. 

     A fifth of the Honduran GDP is generated by migrant Hondurans working in the U.S., a vast number illegally, and sending money back home. When you leave home to do the long, hard and horribly dangerous scrabble from Honduras to the US, and pay money for somebody to get you through that final bit across the river, are you being trafficked or are you just trying to dig you and your family out of poverty by doing what you see as your only option? I mean, it is a COMPLEX subject. 

     But we do it a huge disservice when we try to make it about good and evil, heroes and villains. A whole lot of money gets thrown around on buzz about "human trafficking," and the fundamentals go untouched as always.

The Cashew Girls of Guasaule

      

   I crossed back into Nicaragua from Honduras yesterday at dusty, dry Guasaule, on my way back home to Leon after a work trip. 
     Crossing a Central American border by bus is often a mysterious, confusing process that involves everyone getting out of the bus in a big herd and wandering to and from various unmarked buildings. So it was kind of nice to see the familiar face of Carmen the Cashew Girl as I descended the Tica Bus stairs yesterday.

     She was wearing the brilliantly coloured eye shadow and matching shirt that the Cashew Girls clearly favour as a strategy for getting groggy, overheated bus travellers to remember them. There is something of the sex worker in the visage of the brightly painted and sexily dressed Cashew Girl, who like a worker on stroll has only minutes to get you to take note of her and decide to buy her wares rather than those of her (friendly) rivals.

     Carmen and I had first met last Sunday, when I’d been a bus passenger heading into Honduras and had emerged from the bus into the stark, dry border zone for the first time. Carmen had blinked her vividly made-up eyes at me, touched my arm and called me amiga to be sure she had my attention, and urged me to buy some cashews from her.

     Marañónes, they’re called here. They’re sold unsalted and home-roasted in cheap cellophane bags at street intersections in Managua, but the Guasaule border crossing in northern Nicaragua appears to be a particularly popular place for hawking the nuts. Carmen says hers come from the Honduras side.

     The Cashew Girls come running when the buses arrive at the border, and there’s at least four waiting at the door by the time you get off the bus. Hence the eye shadow, layered on in stand-out hues of pink, purple and blue, the colours helping to distinguish one Cashew Girl from another in the minds of overwhelmed bus passengers (who descend into a clamorous crowd of money-changers, food vendors, cellphone chip sellers, and scruffy kids begging for money). 

     I don’t know if Carmen is particularly skilled or if her pitch simply works well with people like me; at any rate, I spent $5 last Sunday and again yesterday buying cashews from her.

     I resisted at first. “Not right now,” I told her that first time, distracted by the mysterious border crossing process I was about to undertake and unprepared to consider whether I felt like any cashews right now. “Me recuerde,” she told me as I made my way past all the other Cashew Girls vying for my attention – “Remember me.” The colourful eye shadow and matching shirt helped, I admit, and later I bought some cashews for the bus ride.

     Yesterday she was there again as I got off the bus. Once again, I wasn’t at all sure that I even wanted cashews. But she upped her game, guiding me from one building to another so that I always seemed to be at the front of the line for the bewildering process of crossing the border.

     What could I do? I bought some nuts.

     I would have liked to know more about her. How much money did she make in a typical day? Where did she live? Did she have children? Were the Cashew Girls an informal co-op that shared their profits, or was everybody in it for themselves?

     But just like any working girl, time is money for people like Carmen. She can’t afford to waste time chatting. Once she’d made her sale, she touched my arm one last time, told me to take care of myself, and started making her way toward an incoming mini-bus. 

The woman next door

 

  I’m raking leaves outside our house when she approaches me, carrying an empty garbage can that she says will make it easier to gather the leaves for garbage pickup the next day. Paul and I are renting a house for the month of March in Leon, Nicaragua, and the woman and her family live next door.

    At first, I think she has come over just to be nice, because she has lived a long time near this giant tree that constantly sheds leaves and branches and knows how to make the near-daily task of raking a little easier. But she later tells me that she always tries to engage extranjeras like me in conversation. Too many of us arrive in her country with no knowledge of Nicaragua’s troubled history, she says. She is on a one-woman campaign to change that.

    I don’t know how old she is – mid-50s, maybe? That would make her around 19 on the terrible night of May 4, 1979 when the Nicaraguan National Guard, under the direction of the corrupt and vicious president Anastasio Somoza, showed up at 2 a.m. to pull her two brothers from their beds and kill them in the street outside the family home. Right here in this very street, she tells me, pointing to the home a block away where her family was living when it happened. Right in front of her.

    Brothers Porfirio Rene and Oswaldo Jose Alonso Palma were among four young men killed by the National Guard that night. Within two months, Somoza would be gone – first to Miami, where he fled in July 1979, and later assassinated in Panama. The Sandinista revolution was already well underway by the time the four young men were killed, but victory came too late to save them.

    War and death was a Nicaraguan reality for much of the 1900s - first under three generations of Somozas, then during the Sandinista revolution in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and later through nine bloody years of U.S.- and Soviet Union-funded civil war in the 1980s. The good people of Leon – a community of rebellious university students and cultured, intellectual thinkers – were strong supporters of the Sandinista revolution, and would watch many of their children die in the streets before the fighting finally ended in 1989.

    The leader of the Sandinistas, Daniel Ortega, has been part of Nicaragua’s political scene ever since. He led the reconstruction of the country after the last of the Somozas was finally banished, then was elected president for five years in 1985. Then came 17 long years of political banishment before he was re-elected president in 2007.  

    There are those in Nicaragua nowadays who have been deeply disappointed by Ortega’s inability to deliver on so many of the promises made during those revolutionary years. But my neighbour isn’t one of them. She refers to the president and his wife as “Daniel and Rosario,” and it’s clear she feels a very personal connection to them. She says that those who criticize Ortega are either too young to remember how things used to be, or too impatient in their expectations for rapid change.

    In 1979 when her brothers were killed, this little two-block neighbourhood where we live was called Duque. But after that awful night, the city renamed it Colonia 4 de Mayo – the Fourth of May. A small plaque has been placed outside the woman’s childhood home at the end of the block, commemorating the murders of her brothers along with those of Roger Benito Morales Toruño and Noel Ernesto García Zepeda that same night.

    Remember them, she tells me. She scoops up the last of the leaves and returns to her house, called in for dinner by her young grandson. 

Reflections on the end of another adventure: There's no life like it

The loads are heavier in countries like Nicaragua, but the backs are stronger

A troubling aspect of life: You don’t know what you don’t know. As a person driven to know everything, I don’t like that.

I didn't  consciously grasp when we started this Cuso International work in Central America three years ago that I was longing to know more about what I didn't know. But I was. What stands out most as I wrap up my second Cuso posting is how exciting it feels to be learning again.

The role of a Cuso volunteer is essentially to take your professional show on the road and share your skills with people in less-advantaged countries, helping them improve their systems or their training or their processes in ways that ultimately address poverty and inequality.

But never mind the task. The bigger challenge is dropping in cold to another world in the employ of an organization that is happy to see you, but uncertain what to do with you. They will have no real idea or interest in your illustrious career back in Canada, so you’ll be proving your work cred from the ground up.

It sounds kind of scary, I know. I am 58, and once upon a time was a biggish fish in a smallish pond.  But when I first start a Cuso position, I am nothing more than an unproven and unknown older woman who may or may not have had a career as a journalist in some other country and in some other language. It is up to me to demonstrate that I have value.

But professional discomfort and profound humbling aside, this time with Cuso ranks among the most invigorating, challenging, memorable and life-altering years of my work life (I think my three-year stint as the executive director of B.C. grassroots sex-work organization Peers Victoria still wins out).

Some of the new learning is just straight-up communications culture. People like more colour and fewer words in their documents here. They’re lousy about answering emails, so you really have to try for face-to-face time. They like technology, but anyone over the age of 25 is going to need some time to figure out the wired world.

But a lot of our differences are also value-driven. In Canada, work demands often outweigh family relations. In Central America, family always comes first.

Canada’s approach gets you much better economic development, But Central America’s approach keeps people much more bonded and rooted to family – not just the nuclear family, but a hundred aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, almost all of whom probably live nearby and drop by for a visit often. Who’s to say our way is better?

80-year-old Managua man who repairs and sells old shoes he
finds in the garbage. He gets by on 3 sales a week.

As I've said many times in my blog posts, I see my own country much more clearly from afar. On a lot of fronts, it’s an amazing place.

Our social programs are the stuff of dreams to Central Americans, most of whom will work until the day they drop dead and who are completely on their own when dealing with their disabled children, aging parents, health-care problems, and periods of unemployment. They would be agog at all our workplace regulations and benefits.

 But at the same time, it’s pretty cool to see a work culture in Central America that lets people put their personal relations first. Down here when I run into people I know on the street, I've learned to take the time to talk to them without even a twinge of thinking that it’s almost 8:30 a.m. and I should hurry into work. Work waits in Central America – and when you really think about it, that’s not so bad.

Are developed countries like Canada the gold standard? That’s probably been the question that has weighed on my mind most in these three years. I do have skills worth sharing with the non-profits I've been placed with, but I've also gotten so much value out of what they have taught me. More and more I see the richness of a “poor” country, and question my own Canadian work culture. There is a price to pay for efficiency. 

And while I like that I'm from a country able to give time and money to countries in need, I have a new appreciation for the many other ways there are to live a life - and much admiration for people whose resilience and resourcefulness is awe-inspiring. (Like the young Nicaraguan guy near Casares who fixed our broken-down car with a screw driver and a piece of discarded fishing line he found at the side of the road.)

Thanks to everyone who has supported my spouse Paul and I in our Cuso International fundraising, which is closing in on our goal of $7,500. It really has been a life-changing experience. And if you've ever wondered what it might be like to test your own adaptability by working in another culture, two words for you: Do it. 

I've just finished my second assignment with Cuso International. Please visit my fundraising page and support a great Canadian organization doing good work through volunteerism in 17 countries around the world. 

Live and learn, as they like to say

 

  I'm sure some people can share a house with people they don't know well. After four months of doing just that here in Managua, I'm now very certain that I'm not one of them.
    I thought I'd already learned most of the important lessons about life in a foreign land from our Cuso International placement in Honduras during 2012-2014. But it turns out there was one really big one still to come.
    I don't mean to suggest that the profound unpleasantness of this period of house-sharing is the fault of the two other Cuso volunteers who Paul and I share the house with. At this point, I'm quite sure they're as dismayed as I am at how it is that perfectly nice people can end up with a negative group energy that sends us all scrambling for our little hidey-holes when it all gets to be too much (which happens with increasing frequency as the Feb. 27 ends of our posts draw near).
     As the mother and stepmother of five children and the host-mom for all of their many friends during the teen years, I am well familiar with the difficult task of existing in a household full of people. Paul and I survived that period and figured that for a Cuso placement of four short months, sharing a house would be OK.
    But I guess the parent-child relationship is a different situation. You might not like that there are a lot of people in your kitchen chopping vegetables or hogging the stove, but at least they're your people. It's a whole other ball game when you don't have that family connection.
     One of the problems has been our landlady. Paul and I originally spent the first six weeks living in a room in the house where she lives, not understanding that she actually lived there and didn't just manage the place. That was a head-trippy experience of an entirely different kind, as the spacious "common area" was nothing of the kind, seeing as we couldn't sit out there or go into the kitchen without running into the landlady and being harangued about something we or another tenant was doing wrong.
     So then we moved into a house down the road that was managed by the same woman (Error! Error!), where two of our fellow Cuso volunteers were living. We liked the two of them and we all got along, and so the idea of sharing a three-bedroom house that would be totally under our group control seemed like a great plan.
     And for a couple of weeks, it was. We even made the ridiculously tiny fridge work, each of us claiming our little shelves and learning how to stack things strategically on top of each other rather than stand them in their own place. We took care to live collectively, washing our personal dishes immediately and not leaving our stuff scattered around the house.
     But hey, that landlady. She kept on coming by, usually with a poor sod in tow whose job it is to sweep the terrace, whack at cobwebs, and carry our household garbage to the curb. There is no schedule as to when they will show up, and they just walk right in without so much as a knock  - 6 a.m. while I'm doing my morning yoga, 8 p.m. when everyone's solidly into their evening routine, Sunday morning at 8 a.m. while you're sitting in your sleep clothes having a morning coffee. The other day she sat in our living room talking loudly on her cellphone for the better part of an hour while Poor Sod did his cleaning and we cowered in our rooms.
    Meanwhile, the honeymoon period of our placements came to an end and we all moved into the next stage, in which you are beset with self-doubt, angry at your workplace, feeling deeply displaced, and unsure whether you're making any difference at all. Paul and I were familiar with the feelings from our time in Honduras and knew that eventually you pass through that, but our housemates were experiencing it for the first time.
      We all react to stress in our own way. For a while, the group of us drew together as a unified force against the weirdness of the landlady and the many pressures of working in a new culture in workplaces that often seem baffled at what they should with this foreigner who has been plunked into their midst.
     But as the stresses mounted, the unity weakened and our relationships grew strained. We were having to cope with our personal stresses plus manage the way that others in the house coped with theirs, what with all of us living on top of each other. We were living too close and under too much strain to be able to maintain those polite facades that are so vital to collective harmony.

This sums up how I don't feel right now

     Then the landlady moved a young Costa Rican fellow into a shed out behind the house that we had no idea was even a room to rent. His room is so tiny that he spends almost all his time in the common space. His bathroom is mere feet away from our bedroom window, so that I have no choice but to know all the intimate details of his morning routine. No one should have to know that kind of thing.
     So now there are five of us - still sharing that same tiny fridge and small kitchen, and now feeling increasingly resentful for having to line up for stove time, bug somebody about whether they're hording drinking glasses in their room, jostle for our share of the common space. The Costa Rican isn't to blame for how things have turned out, but his addition to the household was definitely the straw that finished off the camel.
     Now, there are lots of times when we don't even pretend to like each other. I actually dread having to be at the house, and am counting down the days until it's all over with a sullen intensity that I don't like seeing in myself. I would like to be able to withdraw to some private space where I could play my accordion and work out my moods through music. But there is no private space.
     I wish I could say that I have been able to rise above it all and be the straight-shooting, collaborative problem-solver I like to think I am. But in fact I've been drawn into the petty dramas and us-versus-them intrigues as much as anyone. I have heard snide, provocative comments coming out of my mouth, brought on by an overwhelming urge I haven't felt since I was a bitchy 14-year-old to punish someone for getting on my nerves. Somebody could do a social experiment on what's happening to us.

     Am I whining? Yeah, I'm whining. But I'm also noting this life lesson in big red capital letters in my book of Lessons Learned: Never Share A House With Anyone But Family. 

    But hey, we're going to laugh about this someday. Maybe. 

Canada and Nicaragua: Different worlds, but not for sex workers

     I’m still shaking my head after two and a half enlightening hours yesterday talking with the local sex workers’ organization here in Managua, RedTraSex (Red de Trabajadores Sexuales). I’m not sure whether to be delighted or shattered by how completely identical the issues are for sex workers in Nicaragua as they are back home in Canada.

     Had it not been for us talking in Spanish, I could have easily been back in Victoria talking to my pals at Peers Victoria. I fear my new friends at RedTraSex were a little discouraged to hear that everything they identified as problems were also problems for sex workers in Canada – stigma, judgment and misunderstanding at the top of that list.

The swag from my RedTraSex visit, including a
key chain designed to fit a condom. Can't wait to 
wear my "I always use a condom" t-shirt.

     Up until we met, the group believed that a country as developed as Canada would have surmounted some of the basic prejudices, misconceptions and petty harassments that make the life of a Nicaraguan sex worker more difficult. But no.

     Case in point: The RedTraSex pamphlets, one of which is about their campaign to reduce stigma facing sex workers when they seek health care, and another whose title translates to “Sex work and trafficking are not the same thing.” The book documenting the work of RedTraSex - a network of sex workers in 14 Latin American countries - is titled “Ni Puta ni Prostituta: Somos Trabajadores Sexuales.” (“Neither Whore Nor Prostitute: We Are Sex Workers.”)

     You could produce those same three publications in an English-language version and they would be totally relevant to Canadian sex workers.

     Discrimination against sex workers at hospitals and clinics is a huge problem in Canada, to the point that many sex workers refuse to disclose what they do for a living and thus don’t get the attention they need for their specific line of work. Here in Nicaragua, almost half of the sex workers that RedTraSex surveyed about health-care access reported that they don’t disclose their line of work to medical professionals for fear of being judged. More than a third of those who did disclose reported feeling an instant and negative change in the doctor’s attitude toward them, and repeated attempts to convince them to quit work.

     The presumption that all sex workers are working against their will and thus trafficked became a big political issue in 2014 in Nicaragua, and led to the passing of a new anti-trafficking law. Having heard nothing about the new law until the first media reports came out, RedTraSex had to launch a major advocacy campaign to push back against the government’s attempts to treat consensual sex work and trafficking as the same thing.

     How completely unsettling that that very same year, it also became a big issue in Canada, the U.S. and Europe as the anti-trafficking movement launched an aggressive campaign to convince the world that sex work and trafficking are one and the same.

     As for the stigmatized and offensive language we use when we talk about sex workers, well, that’s one of the most obvious signs that sex workers continue to occupy a sub-human position in the minds of the general public, because while we no longer tolerate any number of derogatory terms for all kinds of other populations, describing someone as a corporate whore or prostituting their principles remains an acceptable way of condemning someone as the lowest of the low.

     One of the major struggles for Nicaraguan sex workers is government apprehension of their children, the presumption being that if you’re a sex worker, you must be a bad mother. I can’t tell you how many times I witnessed that same problem playing out for women seeking Peers support. 

     Lordy, how is it that the plight of sex workers is the same all over the world?

     On the upside, I had one of the most engaging conversations with some of the most passionate, powerful women I've met since starting to work in Central America three years ago. Unpaid and largely unsupported other than through a little money from Worldfund that covers the rent for their office space and some promotional material, they are kicking serious butt with their ferocious advocacy on behalf of sex workers.

     Other similarities: The women complained of constantly being put under the microscope of researchers, visitors, do-gooders and others who ask deeply personal questions about how much they make, what their spouses and children think of them being sex workers, whether they were abused as children. They complained that any organization that comes with offers of financial support or scholarships also attaches a non-negotiable rider: That if the woman hopes to receive this support, she must “exit” sex work. They complained of the double morality that allows so many of their customers – preachers, police, politicians – to campaign against the rights of sex workers while buying sexual services in their off-hours.

     And they complained about the presumption that all of them have tragic life stories that explain why they work in the industry. The reality is that just like the Canadian sex workers I've met, they came to the work for many reasons, including the fact that a single mother who is a sex worker is able to work fewer hours for higher earnings than many other Nicaraguans.

     “If you ask any of us for the stories of why we came to be sex workers, it’s different for every one of us,” says Maria Elena Davila, the national co-ordinator for RedTraSex. “But we chose this work.”

     RedTraSex has sex worker volunteers in seven regions of Nicaragua, doing what they can with limited resources to reach out to the 15,000 adult women working in the industry (RedTraSex currently doesn’t work with male or trans sex workers). The volunteers work in an informal style reminiscent of the 12-step movement to step up with personal support for other sex workers at any time of the day or night that someone calls with a problem. Condom distribution is a priority. Maria Elena says what the women most appreciate is that the support comes from other sex workers, who can be counted on not to judge them.  

     As is the case in Canada, sex work in Nicaragua exists somewhere between legal and illegal, a shadowy space that leaves workers without basic human rights and vulnerable to police harassment. Maria Elena noted that when some Managua workers recently reported an underage girl on the stroll – who turned out to have been put out there by her parents – police responded by coming to the area and arresting everybody working there.

     “Whenever that happens, you end up at the police station for five or six hours, not making any money,” she says.

     She recounted the extremely difficult moment when she was preparing for a press conference on behalf of RedTraSex and realized that seeing as she was poised to go public as a sex worker, she’d first have to disclose that fact to her mom and her children. Here or in Canada, telling your family the truth is one of the most painful memories in any sex worker’s life, a stark reminder of just how stigmatized and judged this line of work is.

     I’m both honoured and aghast to have heard in the stories of the strong women of RedTraSex virtually a word-for-word retelling of the stories I've heard in Canada. I’m struggling to process the new knowledge that two countries that are worlds apart in so many other ways both treat their sex workers with the same contempt and disrespect, denying them the most basic of rights as workers and as citizens. If ever I needed one more argument to confirm my opinion that this issue is one of the most important human-rights battles of this era, yesterday's conversation was it.

Assisted suicide ruling brings it all back for Sue Rodriguez chronicler

 

My friend and fellow writer Anne Mullens has a very personal connection to this week's Supreme Court of Canada unanimous ruling allowing doctor-assisted suicide.
    She wrote a series of articles over five years on Victoria woman Sue Rodriguez's long and brave court fight in the 1990s - ultimately lost - for the right to have a doctor assist her to die when the day came that she'd had enough of the slow and cruel deterioration brought on by amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Anne then went on to write a very difficult book about other Canadians' battles for a more dignified end to their own lives.
     So when the court handed down its decision this week, Anne had a lot of herself invested in the issue. Here's her powerful blog post on what it felt like to hear the news, and her memories of some of the most traumatizing years of her life collecting the stories of ill people seeking the right to determine at what point they would draw the line in their own lives, and who they would like to help them in those final moments.
    Read it and weep - for all the people who died of chronic and cruel health conditions without the legal right to exercise any control of when or how death would come, and for all those who at least see light at the end of the tunnel on the issue of a dignified death. All eyes are on the federal government now, which has a year to either come up with new end-of-life legislation that doesn't violate people's rights, or get out of the way.