Health care in a poor country

I'm still getting used to living in a really poor country. I know all the stats. I've been doing research for the last six days for a project, so I really know them now. But the reality still surprises.
I'm in Tegucigalpa, the capital, working on a project. At breakfast in the hotel today - tipico, which means eggs, cheese, beans and toast (tortillas for most people) - I was reading the paper and there was a story about 430 doctors who want to work for free. (It was a slightly eerie breakfast, as I think I'm the only guest today.)
They're Hondurans who went to medical school in Cuba. They need to be certified in Honduras and do two years of service before they're allowed to practise. (Their counterparts from Honduran universities only need to do six month of service.)
But there's a catch. The government pays new doctors $310 a month during their period of service. And it doesn't have enough money to pay the 430 new Cuban grads. So for the lack of $133,000 a month, desperately needed medical care isn't available. (That's an oversimplification, because the government is also worried about the future, higher costs of paying those doctors when they're certified.)
On one level, it's not really a choice, at least in the short-term. The Honduras government has a budget of about $3.2 billion, for the army and education and police and health care and everything for 8.2 million people. The B.C. government spends $5.2 billion on elementary and high schools for a population barely half the size. (The reasons that Honduras has so little money rates another post.)
And, in fairness, B.C. takes the same approach, limiting residency placements to save money even though more foreign-trained doctors are keen to practise and need a residency to qualify.
But the system is much worse here. And the problems are much broader. Nursing assistants have been on strike in recent weeks because promised payments have not been made. Interns staged a long strike. Last week, the main hospital in Tegucigalpa cancelled surgeries because it didn't have the chemicals needed to test blood for safety before it was used. Doctors said the problem was that the hospital hasn't been paying suppliers, who won't deliver any more reagents.
It's a mixed public-private system here, and doctors can practise in both. Good luck if you're entirely dependent on the public system. (Which explains the widespread use of plants and herbs for healing in Copan, even in town. When my partner fell and made a mess of her knee, she was offered mango bark to make a antibiotic healing poultice. It seemed to help.)
And good luck if those who are so keen to slash health care spending in Canada get their way. The World Health Organization reports Canada spends 9.2 per cent of GDP on health care. Honduras spends 6.2 per cent.
President Porfirio Lobo criticized the health system Saturday, blamed administrative problems and vowed to sort things out. But with 17 months to go until the next election, he's already a lame duck. Presidents can only serve one four-year term in Honduras, and attention has shifted to this fall's primaries to pick candidates for the parties.
What should happen? Who knows. That's the first lesson from life in a poor country - there are no easy, quick fixes.

Héctor Delgado came to town, and we missed him

What me missed

I think we blew it last night, victims of shoddy research. For the last while, posters have been up around Copan Ruinas promoting the appearance of Héctor Delgado, sponsored by a local evangelical church. He was to perform in the square, as part of an evening of evangelism.

Christian rock is big down here, as I can attest after a long bus ride with a TV showing a concert featuring many soaring ballads about Jesus. I just figured the show in the square was more of the same.

We went, of course. What's the point of living in a strange land if you don't go out and see what's going on?

We're wiser after five months. The event was supposed to start at 6 p.m. We got there around 7, which meant only a 20-minute wait for something to happen. Long enough for Jody to buy a 50-cent cone of cotton candy.

The crowd was huge, which should have been a tip-off. I didn't do a formal estimate, but I'd say 1,500 to 2,000, and I take pride in being a key player in press gallery estimates of legislature lawn protests. It was surely many times the largest gathering we'd seen in the square. Even more than for the Mayan soccer game with a flaming ball.

The stage was slick, with a backdrop of about 2,000 CDs suspended in plastic sleeves as a kind of curtain, catching the light, and smoke machines and a couple of eight-foot screens, one showing live video of the concert, the other, most of the time, the computer screen of one of the stagehands.

And the band was high energy. Drums, keyboard, guitar, bass, violin, three backup singers, and a compelling, if not vocally gifted, lead singer. (Though he may have overexploited the pogo as a stage move, a mistake I have made in the distant past on the dance floor.)

The crowd knew some of the songs, and pumped their arms. The chicas were dressed to the nines, in a slightly subdued version of Canadian clubbing clothes. (Actually, quite subdued version.) There were teens and kids and families with babies. It was good.

We bailed after four or five songs, working our way through the crowd in the dark. Pollo Express had no more chicken by then, but eight or nine food vendors set up on the street by the square on weekends, and we got grilled chicken, served over fried plantains, pickled sliced onion and beets, with beans and cheese. But that meant we left before Héctor Delgado.

And, after googling him belatedly today, I fear that might have been a mistake. He used to be Héctor "El Father" and Héctor "El Bambino," and was a reggaeton pioneer, a genre combining reggae, hiphop, salsa and Latin influences. Héctor was a star, hot producer, clothing designer and celeb. He sold 130,000 copies of an album in Puerto Rico, his country, in two days. Héctor is a talent.

In 2008, he announced the death of Héctor "El Father" and said he was going to pursue a religious calling. And after a couple of years of farewell concerts, he eventually came to our town.

And we missed him.

Which is just another reminder that we don’t know much, and information is in short supply. The posters didn’t say Héctor Delgado, former music force. The sponsors were an evangelical church and half-a-dozen small stores. I've never heard of reggaeton. There is no newspaper to write about his appearance. Who knew?

Next time, I’ll do the research first. And I won’t miss the next Héctor Delgado.

Thinking of Honduras as an African country

I've been doing some research on Honduras for a project, and, while it's early days, I'm working toward a theory that would see the country, in many ways, as an African nation.
I've been mining the United Nations Human Development Report 2011, which I highly recommend for its exhaustive quantitative comparisons of 185 countries.
There are obvious findings. Northern Europe and North America are good places to live. Most of Africa isn't. And there are broad regional trends. Neighbours will generally be similar in a lot of ways.
Honduras, again based on first looks, seems an outlier.
Take income inequality. The HDR uses the relationship between the average income of the richest 20 per cent and the poorest 20 per cent as one measure.
In Honduras, the average income of the richest group is 30.4 times the income of the poorest. Only Namibia (52.2) and Angola (31) have greater inequality. (Canada's ratio is 5.5.)
That's partly because the poorest 20 per cent are really, really poor. But Honduras still has more in common with African states than its neighbours.
The other data supports the finding. On the Environmental Performance Index, based in 25 indicators across 10 categories, Honduras scores 49.9, on the average for countries with "Medium Human Development." But its peers in the Latin American and Caribbean group score an average 65.2, significantly better.
Honduras is below the medium development group for under-height and underweight children ("stunting and wasting," in the language of the reports. But the rate is almost twice as high as the average for the region.
About 64 per cent of the eligible population is attending high school, a little worse than the average for the medium group. But in Latin America, 90.7 per cent of potential students are in high school.
It's striking, across most measures, that Honduras is out of step with its neighbours and, perhaps, more like countries in Africa.
I'm not sure what that means. But I expect the nature of most things - aid, trade, government relations - is different for African nations than for countries in the Americas. And it might be time to think of Honduras as a lost piece of Africa.

Living in the space between cultures

We're finishing a brief trip back to Canada to visit friends and families and so my partner could pick up an honourary degree from the University of Victoria. It was, of course, much fun, and it was especially great to visit with family after five months away.
It was also crazy busy, as we ran from appointment to party to storage locker. (The storage locker, six feet by eight feet, contains the last of our worldly possessions in Canada. After five crime-free months in the murder capital of the world, we returned to find someone had broken into our supposedly secure locker and made off with some clothes - the few things we liked well enough to keep - and a pair of speakers.)
I quickly realized life in Victoria, even after such a short time away, was foreign. We don't rush to appointments in Copan Ruinas. Our lives are self-contained. There are no big stores and few restaurants, so beyond my almost daily walks to Bodega Gloria and the market stalls, life is simple.
And we don't have a car. We rented a nice Ford for our time in Victoria, which was handy. But I was surprised how irritating and unpleasant I found it to have to pile into a big metal box and cope with crowded streets to get anywhere. I missed the sunny, warm strolls to run errands.
It was, in short, a time of culture shock, and a persistent feeling that I didn't belong here.
But the culture shock is just as real in Copan. Language, attitudes, values are almost all strange and unfamiliar. In Honduras, saying someone has 'ambicion' is a term of disapproval. Striving for a better education, house or job is seen as putting yourself above the community. 'Comformismo' is a compliment, praise for the way a person fits in and accepts the values and unwritten rules of society.
In my most recent stint in Spanish classes, the maestra and I spent a while talking about homelessness and mental illness. We shared many of the same views. But she also described a woman in her father's community who walked in the woods at night and began to act more and more oddly. Surely evil spirits are sometimes the explanation for mental illness, she suggested.
I've always felt a bit apart, but it's striking now how much I'm a man without a country.
Which is not a bad thing. Distance gives you perspective on cultures' strong and weak points. As an outsider, I can observe that religion in Honduras can serve, for some, as an excuse for inaction. God gets thanked or blamed for a lot of things, when really people could just try a little harder to make change themselves.
And with the benefit of distance, I have a greater appreciation of philanthropy and "good works" in Canada. There is a tradition of giving, and of service clubs and churches stepping up to help when needed, that is a much greater strength than Canadians recognize.
One of the week's chores was paying my taxes. The endlessly patient accountant who works with me observed that I was probably happier paying taxes after five months in a country where services are non-existent or substandard.
He was right. The 'all taxes are bad' crowd should spend a year in Honduras, where schools are overcrowded, policing ineffectual, the health-care system is struggling and basic infrastructure is crumbling. Those people insisting that Canada must cut health care spending would benefit from a tour of a Honduran hospital. Health spending in Canada is about 9.6 per cent of GDP; Honduras spends about 6.2 per cent. That level of spending translates into more illness, deaths and costs to families.
I don't mind the feeling of being between cultures. And I consider it a good sign that I'm much looking forward to getting home, and back to walking the cobble streets to the market.

Wise words from the doctor

Dr. Jody Paterson: 'There's nothing saintly or special about social justice - it's just work.'

We're back from Honduras for a week, after five months. While it's great to see everyone, we were strongly motivated, because my partner and inspiration, Jody Paterson, was getting an honourary degree from the University of Victoria.
Yesterday was the big day, and it was a big day, from the ceremony and on through the celebrations.
The Times Colonist ran most of her speech today. I recommend it. One of the many things that make Jody such a powerful person is her consistent willingness to ignore all the problems and obstacles and just start working when something needs to be done.
As she told the convocation when talking about working for social justice, "You don't need to be a miracle worler. You just need to be the kind of person who shows up.'

A few acres of beans and corn, a cow that fell off a cliff: Farming in Honduras

I’ve been reading about land occupations and protests in the Honduran papers since April 18, when several thousand campesinos and supporters moved onto private lands and claimed them.

Like almost everything else in Honduras, it’s baffling. Land titles are a mess, laws routinely ignored and small farmers claim their land has been confiscated illegally and sold or given to large landowners. There are laws limiting the size of holdings, but they aren’t enforced.

It’s a long dispute, with some 60 activists reported killed in the last two years. In the big direct action started in April, some 1,700 campesino groups occupied land.

The government has promised to expropriate some 3,600 hectares from sugar companies and give it to small farmers, but when isn’t clear. The process is long. And, of course, the companies are unhappy and warn expropriation will hurt foreign investment.

This kind of dispute has been going on at least since the 1970s. Land reform has been an on-again, off-again enthusiasm of Central American governments - though usually off-again.

Acess to couple of acres of steep, marginal land is the difference between poverty and extreme poverty. (More than 60 per cent of Hondurans live in poverty and 40 per cent in extreme poverty.)

I’ve been back in Spansh classes for two weeks. At this stage, we mostly talk for four hours a day, which means we cover a lot of topics to keep from getting bored. Religion, family, mental illness, illegal immigration to the U.S. - and farming, since my current teacher’s spouse has a small farm.

Copan Ruinas is a sort-of familiar market economy. People mostly trade their labour for money (or run tiny businesses) and buy things in stores.

But go two kilometres outside town and everything changes. Subsistence economies are the norm. Families try to grow enough beans and corn between May and November, in the rainy season, to make it through the year. Frijoles and corn tortillas are the staple foods. If they have more beans or corn than they need for the coming 12 months, they sell or barter it in the local community. If they are fortunate, and good managers, they have chickens and maybe a cow for milk, and work for some cash.

That all requires at least a little land. Ridiculous land, often. People farm rocky slopes than I would be reluctant to try and climb because they’re just too steep. A woman told me how she and her spouse had bought two calves and raised them to be healthy cows, but one fell off a cliff on their precipitous land and was killed. They ate it, but it cut their milk supply in half. (They use some milk, sell some to neighbours for 40 cents a litre, about one-third of the store price, and sometimes make quejada - fresh cheese.)

It’s hard work. Plant by hand, weed by hand, bend the corn stalks over before harvest to let the sun dry the ears, pick them, husk them - the husks bring a few pennies because they’re used to wrap corn meal in for steaming - pick out the bad kernels, put the ears in a net bag and beat them with sticks until the kernels come off. Clean, use and sell.

That’s if you have land. If not, you’ve got it even harder. There is work; even small farmers will hire help with the backbreaking labour. 

It’s piecework. The standard unit is a tarea, about 20 by 30 metres. Chop the weeds in a tarea, and you make $1. A fast worker might do two or more in a day; an older campesino one. Sometimes, the landowner doesn’t have money, so the  payment is in corn - a day’s work for five or 10 lbs of corn. It’s not much, but it’s more than you would make cutting sticks for firewood with your machete and carrying it into town on your back to sell.

Even if you have land today, you might not tomorrow. We did a horse ride into the hills with a guy Jody met who works in the sewage lagoons (a very good place to see birds). As we plodded up the dirt track - the campesinos use even steeper, shorter footpaths to town, children and women with babies making their way home with supplies - we asked if the families own their little adobe one-room houses and tiny plots. No. The dueno - landowner - lets them squat. If he sells, the new owner could tell them to move on.

USAID is the American government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance, like CIDA. It has a really useful land tenure and property rights project. In Honduras, it found, land distribution is highly unequal and a small percentage of the population owns much of the land. Ownership rights, including exclusive use and transferability, are generally the province of large landowners and multinational corporations.

“Approximately 80 per cent of the privately held land in the country is untitled or improperly titled,” USAID reports. “Only 14 per cent of Hondurans legally occupy properties and, of the properties held legally, only 30 per cent are registered.”

And the most insecure are “minifundistas,” the small farmers working on 70 per cent of the land.

There’s a limited supply of good land. About 15 per cent of Honduras is suited for agriculture - it’s surprisingly mountainous. Big companies have had some of the best land tied up for 120 years, since the Vaccaro brothers, Italian immigrants living in New Orleans, started exporting coconuts and bananas. Today, the best land is used for sugar canes and bananas and palm oil.

Which is fine. Exports are important.

But give families - or co-ops - a little usable land, and some support, and... 

I was going to write lives are changed, but that might not be true. The difference between poverty and extreme poverty is important, but might not mean a different future for anyone.

But it would mean a slightly better life for children and families today.

Footnote: Of course, the other useful measure is improved farming practices, which Jody Paterson writes about here.

Swimming with the happy angels

It's been a stretch without posting, and I'm not sure why.
But today I headed to the piscina to help Jody on an outing with the orphans.
That meant four hours of Spanish school in the morning - I'm back for a two-week stint - then finishing up a report on a security survey of volunteers for Cuso Honduras. (Mostly, they feel pretty safe, despite the country's crime problems. The biggest concerns are around travel, because the roads are dangerous and buses iffy.)
Then I headed out in the very hot midday with a plastic bag of newly purchased towels and banana chips in one hand and a five-litre bottle of some sort of powdered juice in the other. Jody - or Dr. Jody as I now call her - had left earlier to head up the steep hill to the orphanage, or group home, or whatever you want to call it. As it happened, her procession - five kids, plus a woman who lives at the orphanage and her two children - came down the avenue as I emerged from Calle Independencia, our street. They looked a little like orphans because Sunday was haircut day, and the three boys had prison-style buzz cuts.
The pool is nice. We go one day most weekends. It's the pool for one of the hotels, but located about 800 metres away from town, past cantina row, in a little garden with palm trees and hammocks and lounge chairs. Hardly anyone uses it. At night, there's a disco - Papa Changa's - but except for the Bob Marley CDs, it's quiet in the daytime.
Jody had arranged for the orphans to swim for free, but of course the guy at the pool knew nothing about that. So we paid, and they swam with wild enthusiasm. They ranged from one to 12, and some could swim and some were a little freaked by the big pool.
But they were all responsible and no trouble. I had wondered if I would have to rescue someone, but no. I supposed looking after yourself becomes a habit. And they hung in the water for a long time, getting us to toss them around and showing off for each other. Then they ate the banana chips and gulped the powdered drink and the rain came. We waited for a while, then trudged back as torrents ran down the streets.
We'll be back. There are about 25 kids old enough to swim, but you can only take five or six at a time.
I've sure spent a lot of time in swimming pools with kids over the years.

Jody's recent post on the orphanage, worth reading, is here.

Two dead pregnant women, and the war on drugs

I meant to do a post last week, when the the New York Times carried a story saying the U.S. was taking the war on drugs into Honduras. DEA agents are operating out of three small remote bases, using U.S. helicopters and other equipment, and working with Honduran police.

"This new offensive, emerging just as the United States military winds down its conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and is moving to confront emerging threats, also showcases the nation’s new way of war: small-footprint missions with limited numbers of troops, partnerships with foreign military and police forces that take the lead in security operations, and narrowly defined goals, whether aimed at insurgents, terrorists or criminal groups that threaten American interests," the NYT enthused.

What got my attention was this sentence."The effort draws on hard lessons learned from a decade of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq, where troops were moved from giant bases to outposts scattered across remote, hostile areas so they could face off against insurgents."

Come on. Iraq is a mess. Nothing lasting has been accomplished in Afghanistan, at a cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

Jon Lee Anderson did a fine piece in The New Yorker on the reality of the anti-drug effort in Afghanistan. U.S. contractors, hired to do the work, made money, but not much else positive happened. 

Why would it? If people want something, suppliers will provide it. That's the lesson of prohibition.

The New York Times report went on about the safeguards and rules of engagement in Honduras. 

But on Friday, days later, El Tiempo reported, four "humble and honest citizens" were killed when DEA agents and Honduran police in a helicopter opened fire on a boat on the Patuca River in northeastern Honduras. They were after narcotraficantes, but apparently got the wrong boat. Two men, and their pregnant partners, were killed. Four other people were wounded.

Area residents, El Tiempo reported, set fire to four houses because they blamed local authorities for the deaths.

The local mayor, Lucio Baquedano, was not happy. "These operations were performed irresponsibly because it assumes that the people involved are specialists who will act against drug traffickers and not against healthy people."

Not a great translation. But the point is clear. 

There is increasing support in Latin America for legalizing the drug business. The U.S. isn't doing anything meaningful to reduce or manage demand, the argument goes. 

Why should Honduras and other countries engage in an expensive and futile battle against narco traffickers, and deal with the crime and corruption that comes with the drug trade?

There is real money to be made in supplying Americans and Canadians with cocaine, in a country where people are poor. People can be expected to seize the opportunity, whatever the risks, and to fight, and kill, each other for the chance to escape poverty.
Bringing the war on drugs - with real armies - to Honduras means more deaths and, at best, that the cocaine route moves on to some other country.

Lost in Translation, or in conference with OCDIH

Back from a two-day annual planning meeting with OCDIH, the agency I'm to help in Honduras, and I must say it went brilliantly. I succeeded in managing their expectations down to the point that any contribution I make will come as an enormous and pleasant surprise.

The entire team - some 40 people - gathered to review plans and current issues. It was my introduction to them, and the organization.

To the extent that they are thinking about me at all, the OCDIH team is probably hoping that my Spanish is really weak. It's either that, or I am just not terribly bright.

The meeting only happens once a year. I tried to weasel out the day before, but Edgardo, the top guy, made it clear to the local office that I should be there.

So at 4:45 a.m. Thursday, in the pre-dawn dark, I was in the square to catch a ride in a truck with the local OCDIH office staff. They probably weren't thrilled. I was the sixth person in a truck that seats five. Fortunately, Carlita was small enough to perch on the front console.

We roared along the winding, hilly road to La Entrada, about an hour, and then went another 15 minutes to Nueva Arcadia, where OCDIH has another office. Farmers are burning off the hillsides so they can plant before the rainy season, a bad but common agricultural practice. The haze is everywhere, so thick at one point we were driving the speed limit - a rarity unless a giant truck is in the way - with our four-way flashers on.

We then piled onto a bus, chartered for the occasion, that usually runs between two towns. It was a yellow school bus declared surplus by some district in upstate New York. 

Improved, of course. The row of seats on the driver's side had been lengthened by 10 inches to hold, nominally, three people. A 32-inch LCD TV had been mounted over the driver. And a giant 'Jesus Christo' decal covered the top half of the front window.

The decal was reassuring, given the state of Honduran roads. And we had more insurance. OCDIH stands for the Organismo Cristiano de Desarrollo Integral de Honduras (Dearrollo being development). And on both legs of the journey, we watched a big Christian rock concert on the TV. If our bus went off a steep embankment, the faithful would have some tough questions for God.

We gathered more people from OCDIH offices along the way. Hondurans value greetings. They shook hands, kissed, greeted each other in ways that conveyed real warmth. Edgardo, the boss, made a point of introducing me to the puzzled crew.

Guest today, lunch tomorrow

And, after three hours, we bumped into Monte Horeb, a kind-of hotel "capacitacion centre" outside Gracias Lempiras. First, a big breakfast in an open-air area restaurant - eggs, beans, cheese, tortillas, pickled vegetables - served up cafeteria style, then into the meetings.

Which began with a devotional. Religion is central to NGO life in Honduras. So we had a prayer, and then broke into groups to talk about seven scriptural passages - my group met outside in the sun - and  how they related to our goals of planning for OCDIH. We sang some religious songs, thankfully with lyrics projected on a screen - one to the tune of Red River Valley - and shared our thoughts on the scriptures.

And the meetings were good, if a little undisciplined in terms of time and schedules. Hondurans value inclusiveness, so a one-hour session can stretch into two without any compensating changes in the schedule.

But I was impressed with the presentations and the contributions. I learned a lot about the organization, which works with farmers and poor communities in economic and political development, and the challenges. 

Which is amazing, since I understood about two-thirds of the presentations and maybe one-fifth of the discussions.

Powerpoint was my best friend. In Canada, as soon as I hear the quiet hum of a projector in a meeting room, my mind began to drift. Here, my spirits soared anytime the agenda promised a 'Ppt.' I can read Spanish much better than I can speak it. The more detailed - and likely more tedious for rest of the audience - the better.

And in Canada, I’m good at meetings. I’m quick to grasp things, strategic in finding common ground, purposeful and pretty articulate. Here, I felt like a Grade 3 student thrust into a management meeting on take-your-kid-to-work day. Even if you have something to say, silence seems a wiser option.

The last such event I attended was at a Florida golf resort and conference centre. We ate well, drank some and each had a suite.

At the OCDIH meeting, after lunch, we crossed a field to see our rooms. One for men, one for women, two rows of metal bunks, each about two feet apart. A pillow, sheet and bar of soap. Five showers, one sink and three toilets in an annex at the end. It felt like a cross between summer camp and prison. (Based on my one summer stay at Camp Pinecrest, they are not conceptually that dissimilar.)

Anyone who donates to international aid organizations should be pleased. A chartered school bus, accommodation that almost certainly cost less than $5 a head and meetings that left no real down time. Pretty good value. (And I mean no down time. I woke at 4:50 a.m., because two guys had started talking about some organizational issue as they lay in their bunks.)

The meals were tough for me. The fare in Honduras is built around three staples - beans, tortillas and  queso - a white, salty cheese.  They were part of breakfast, lunch and supper. 

That was fine. I like beans. The challenge was making conversation in my tortured Spanish. Lord knows what I said, or the answers I offered to questions that weren’t actually asked. I spent half an hour talking communications with Gloria, the lead OCDIH person in that area. I’m sure her spirits sank with each passing minute.

But as we retraced the journey on the bus - through some beautiful country, big hills, broad valleys, narrow gorges - I was running through some ways I could help. They have some great stories to tell, and some issues came up in the meetings that cry out for a communications solution. I am good at that. If I can make myself understood. 

And everyone included me in their elaborate goodbyes as they got off the bus.

I don’t think they’re expecting much. But I’m aiming to surprise them.

Starting from scratch in Honduras

From New York Times

I wrote not long ago about the plan - or hope, anyway - for charter cities in Honduras. The idea is that all the current efforts to improve things haven't worked, so it's time to try something radical. Set aside a big chunk of land, start a new city from scratch, suspend democracy and let technocrats make the rules, with the help of a foreign government or two.
Effectively, create a brand new country within Honduras.
There are obvious perils, as I noted. But once you've lived her for a while, it's hard to dismiss the idea out of hand.
There's an interesting piece in the NYT today on the topic.

The Liberals and the point of no return

Having been in the provincial press gallery during the collapse of public confidence in Glen Clark and the NDP, I can claim some familiarity with government tipping points.
There is a day, or maybe a week, when something shifts, and political recovery, already difficult, becomes impossible.
It's not a question of one issue. The casino-licence scandal would have been bad for the NDP administration, for sure, but might have been survivable if it had not messed up so badly on other issues, substituting spin and empty announcements for competent government.
It appears the Liberals might have reached the same desperate point.
The BC Rail scandal will not go away. The government's decision to pay $6 million in legal fees for Dave Basi and Bob Virk appears to be fatal.
Government policy - and the agreement with Basi and Virk - were crystal clear. If they were found not guilty, the government would cover their legal costs. If they weren't, the two would be on the hook. Basi had signed a lien on his home, at the government's demand, as part of a deal.
But, as the BC Rail trial was about to hear potentially damaging testimony, the government cut a deal. It agreed to cover $6 million in legal fees for Basi and Virk. If they pleaded guilty. The special prosecutor also promised no jail time, which would have been expected in a breach of trust case of this magnitude.
The government's position has been that the guilty pleas and the $6-million payment were unrelated.
But that's simply incredible. No matter what clever legal and bureaucratic moves moves were made, the deal was that the government covered the $6 million as part of a deal to get guilty pleas. It appears a  government inducement to get guilty pleas and end the trial.
Vaughn Palmer offers a good review of the government's claims - and their weaknesses - here. The government's arguments might impress legal scholars - or 18th-century Jesuits - but average citizens will find them unpersuasive.
Which, like the casino scandal, might not have been determinative.
But the Christy Clark government has not shown competence on other issues. With 11 sitting days left, the Liberals have not yet introduced the bill to repeal the HST, the mea culpa citizens are awaiting. It has floundered on other issues and shown no clear direction.
The polls have been bad for some time. But this week might mark the point at which recovery became impossible

Update:
There is a very good look at the evidence establishing that the $6 million was an inducement to obtain guilty pleas, ending the trial, at The Gazetter's site here.

Van Dongen raises a good question about the BC Rail scandal legal deal

I might have considered MLA John van Dongen's questions on the $6-million payment of the legal fees of  Dave Basi and Bob Virk in the B.C. Rail scandal a fishing expedition.
But Attorney General Shirley Bond's failure to provide answers suggests he might be on to something.
Van Dongen, now a Conservative after leaving the Liberals, asked Bond a straightforward question.
The government's position is that the decision was made by deputy finance minister Graham Whitmarsh, who had the legal ability to release Basi and Virk from their commitment to cover the $6 million if they were found guilty.
But deputy ministers don't have unlimited power to spend taxpayers' dollars.
Van Dongen asked which section of the Financial Administration Act gives the deputy minister the power to make that decision without authorization from cabinet or elected officials.
And Bond couldn't come up with one, although the government surely must have prepared for every possible question on the B.C. Rail scandal.
Van Dongen noted "The act sets out very specific limits for the forgiveness and extinguishments of debts owing the provincial government." That's sensible. A manager shouldn't have the power to let people or companies abandon their debts to the province without checks and balances.
So where in the act is the the deputy minister given the power to forgive a $6 million promise to pay legal fees, he asked?
Bond couldn't, or wouldn't answer, except with an unsupported clam the authority is somewhere in the act.
Maybe she reflected a general government approach of refusing to provide specific answers to any questions.
Or maybe van Dongen has identified a serious legal problem in the B.C. Rail payment.
The ethical problem, of course, remains in any case.
Basi and Virk pleaded guilty to get $6 million to pay their legal fees (and light sentences). If they had not, they would have lost their homes and everything they had.
Without the inducement provided by the provincial government, the trial would have continued.
The appearance - at the least - is that the provincial government paid to persuade the defendants to plead guilty. And that is not how the justice system is supposed to work.

You can read the exchange between Bond and van Dongen here.

My driving test in 2039

My dad passed his driving test on his 87th birthday Friday in Medicine Hat. My mum passed her's earlier this year. Good going for both of them.
It struck me that if I take a driving test at the same age, it will be in 2039, which seems improbably far away. (I posted the observation on Facebook, and people commented hopefully on the possibility I'd take the test in a solar-powered flying car.)
Then I realized that if our two youngest, Sam and Rachelle, face the same retest at 87, it would be in 2072.
If our youngest grandboy Owen faces a test at the same age, it will be in 2096.
It's my birthday today, so I'm a little more conscious of the passing of time.
But I've never really thought about the prospect of being around  in 2039 (accepting that I might not be). The idea that a kid I know and care about will quite likely be waiting on the arrival of the next century is mind-blowing, to use a word that reveals just how long I have been around.
And instructive. I tend to think of the next few years. When I was a corporate guy, running newspapers, I thought of the next few months, the quarterly results being all important. Politicians think in terms of a four-year election cycle, or less if there aren't fixed election dates.
But for our children, and their children, the game is much longer. Logging protected areas to get three or four more years of production won't mean much in 10 or 50 years. Running a deficit to pay today's bills just means a debt that will be due in the future.
Then there are the big issues. Even if climate-change deniers challenge the scientific consensus on causes, the changes ahead are significant. Here in Honduras, they are imminent. People have planted beans and corn on the same days in May for generations, confident the rains would come soon after. If the rain doesn't come, and the crops wither, they go hungry and, perhaps, children die. In the 'developed world,' adaptation and technical responses are possible solutions. Not here, not for the 60 per cent of Hondurans living in poverty.
And there are the trend lines. In Canada, wealth has been increasingly concentrated in a small group, thanks in part to government policies, as I noted here. If that trend continues over decades, the gap will be enormous.
Voter turnout - the ultimate indicator of government legitimacy - has steadily fallen. When will it reach a point that democracy is no longer a credible concept?
It's past time that political parties - and all of us - start to talk about the future we see for our grandchildren.

The distinct allure of abandoning democracy in Honduran cities

Three months ago, when I was new in Honduras, I probably would have dismissed the 'charter cities' idea pitched in a column in today's Globe and Mail as undemocratic and dangerous.
Now I'm not sure the Honduran government's decision to give them a try here is wrong.
The concept is a free-market elitist's dream.  Set aside a large parcel of land, big enough for a city with several million inhabitants. Make it, at least figuratively, a walled city separate from the norms and conventions and justice system and laws of the host country.
Suspend democracy and give power to appointed experts who would set up new rules and enforcement systems. (Some basic rights and guarantees would be preserved.)
The common model would see foreign governments, and private companies, help with administration - maybe providing judges or a police force.
The concept is that the cities, by providing stability and safety and shunning corruption, would attract foreign investment. There would be jobs. And people would choose to move to them. The Globe column pitches the idea as creating a little Canada in the middle of Honduras, which is in itself attractive. Equally, it could be described as setting up a little China in the middle of the country, with the state's experts making all the rules.
The idea tends to be embraced by free-market enthusiasts, who counter the undemocratic aspects by noting people can vote with their feet by moving away from the city if they don't like it.
That's not really democracy, nor is it really true. Desperately poor people - and more than 40 per cent of Hondurans live in extreme poverty - grab at any opportunity. Survival takes priority over exercising or demanding democratic rights. Some 700,000 Hondurans are living illegally in the U.S., and every day people try a dangerous journey to a better life, risking robbery, murder and starvation along the way. In the first three months of this year, the U.S. has sent 8,200 people back. (The economy would be devastated if Hondurans didn't head to the U.S. They send about $2.7 billion back to their families here - about 19 per cent of the country's GDP. (Those quick with numbers will note that the entire economic output of this country of 8.3 million people is less than British Columbia spends on health care.))
So claiming that they will leave a charter city if the masters abuse them is just false. (There is a useful post on the perils of model cities here; advocates make their case in this report.)
Democracy is messy and inefficient. But who would the appointed directors of the charter city serve - the citizens, or the companies, largely foreign, whose investment is essential to the city's success?
It's not just a theoretical discussion here. Last year, the Honduran Congress voted to allow Regions Especial de Desarrollo, or REDs. The law clears the way for charter cities.
But all that said, I can't reject the idea out of hand. It is really tough to see a way forward, one that would ease the suffering and give hope to Hondurans, who consider crime, corruption, poverty and bad government the norm, and an inevitability.
Maybe model cities - for all the risks - would offer an alternative that would at least suggest possibilities for the people of this country.
As Bob Dylan said, when you ain't got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

Byelections not great for Conservatives, or Liberals

Four thoughts on the byelection results.

First, New Democrats should obviously be pleased. Tidy campaigns, two wins, no apparent effect from the attack ads. In Chilliwack-Hope, turnout was down by 2,900, but the New Democrats gained 130 votes over their 2009 result, while the Liberals lost 5,490. The Conservatives' total increased by 2,350 votes.

Second, the results show the Liberals can still claim to be the choice of those prepared to vote strategically to block the NDP. That's important for Christy Clark. If the Conservatives had placed second in either riding, John Cummins would have at least a theoretical claim to the support of strategic anti-NDP voters.

Third, the results confirm the Liberals' problems are much deeper than a split in the non-NDP vote. Look at those numbers in the first paragraph above. Liberals support dropped by 5,490 votes; Conservative support only increased by 2,350 votes. Some people who voted Liberal in 2009 voted NDP; many more just stayed home. One of the fallacies in the argument that making the Conservatives go away would solve the Liberals' problems is that Conservative support would all migrate to the Liberals. Many Conservative voters would not vote at all, based on these results.

Fourth, Cummins did well enough in both ridings to keep Conservatives enthused, despite the third-place showing. The party attracted 15 per cent of the vote in Port Moody-Coquitlam; weak, but not bad considering there wasn't even a candidate in the 2009 election, and 25 per cent in Chilliwack-Hope.

That's bad news for the Liberals too. There's much talk of uniting-the-right to save the Liberals - or whatever a new party might end up being named. But that faces big hurdles. The Conservatives are surging because many voters can't stand the NDP or the Liberals. They won't be easily wooed. And other Conservatives are hardcore social conservatives who believe they have finally found a party that speaks for them. They too will be difficult to convert to Liberals.

And Cummins is not a man given to political compromise.

All of which creates a problem for Clark and the Liberals. A bid to relaunch the party - or a new party - looks desperate and might not work. Arguing that people have to vote for the Liberals even if they think they're doing a lousy job would alienate some voters and is hardly inspiring.

Attack ads to scare voters into voting Liberal are an option, but it's hard to see how they would be enough.

Hard days ahead for the Liberal party.

And another thing....

Clark continued to make the argument Friday that the Liberals are the only alternative to the New Democrats, and that she is the ordained leader of the anti-NDP forces.

That was reinforced by calls Clark chief of staff Ken Boessenkool made to Conservative organizers, according to some fascinating reports from Rob Shaw of the Times Colonist. Boessenkool is apparently pitching a merger - but Clark's leadership of the merged party is not open to debate.

But a look at the combined Liberal-Conservative vote in the byelections shows the problem with that position. The fact is that 41 per cent of anti-NDP voters rejected Clark and the Liberals. If there is to be a new coalition party, it's hard to see how it can be led by a person who has - at best - the support of 59 per cent of its base.

PIne beetle jobs disaster and government inaction (and secrecy)

Independent MLA Bob Simpson yesterday raised questions about a government document forecasting half the forest jobs in the Interior would disappear in the next few years. The rush to harvest the pine beetle wood will be over. The damaged forests will be decades away from harvest size. No wood, no mills, no jobs. The document proposes a few short-term measures, like logging in protected areas. (The government was quickly removed from the government website once Simpson asked about it in the legislature.)

The economic crisis reflects a massive government failure to respond to an inevitable and obvious crisis. In a 2004 column, I wrote about the job losses when the pine beetle wood was harvested.

The crisis would challenge any government. There are no easy routes to economic diversification to replace a core industry, or retraining for its workers.

But the federal government's response has been anemic, given the scale of the disaster. The province's Pine Beetle Action Plan has been hopelessly inadequate, especially in terms of economic development. The provincial government has failed to warn workers that their jobs will end, and missed opportunities to take bold action.

All despite the fact that this disaster has been unfolding in slow motion, in plan sight.

Update: Simpson has the document, now declared secret by the government, at his website here.

The strange world of Honduran teachers

There's no end of baffling stories in Honduran newspapers. Today, I read about a three-toed sloth - endangered here - rescued from a San Pedro Sula home where it was being kept, badly, as a pet. It's doing OK. The story was unclear why the people thought a sloth would be a good substitute for a dog.

But the reports on the education system - especially teachers and their unions - are the most baffling.

First, the news was that teachers were striking because they hadn't been paid. Cheques were weeks or months late. Some stories said the government didn't have the money on hand. Others said the payroll systems were simply a mess. Either way, it's bizarre that the state can't get its act together to pay employees.

Then the education minister - a federal post - was whacked. In part, El Tiempo noted, it was because he couldn't get a grip on the job. After two years, he still hadn't been able to establish how many teachers were actually employed.

That suggests one reason people weren't being paid. But the converse was apparently true; a 2011 audit found 3,448 'ghost' teachers were getting paycheques, but couldn't be found in any school.

Then both papers reported widespread corruption in hiring and promotion policies. Education officials were demanding, and getting, $3,000 to $4,000 for teaching places. The right cash payment - or political connections - could jump a candidate ahead of more competent, better qualified applicants, or buy a bump in salary level or better school. Some 18,000 unemployed teachers are looking for work. If you can get a job, the pay is good. Bribery would be appealing, and worth millions to the recipients.

That story is still unfolding.

And of course, it's all against a backdrop of overcrowded, poorly equipped classrooms, some with 90-plus kids from several grades.

I usually try to bring these posts back to B.C. This one is a little harder.

But there is one thing in common. Despite the problems like not being paid regularly, people are lining up to be teachers in Honduras and paying kickbacks to get jobs.

In B.C., about 1,800 people a year graduate with teaching degrees. Another 800 show up from other provinces hoping for work. But there are only about 1,000 vacancies a year. Despite the long odds, people are trying for teaching jobs and spending years on sub lists. (And if bribery were possible, I expect jobs would go for a tidy sum)

Which is bad news for the BCTF. It's hard to argue wages are uncompetitive when there are almost three applicants for every job, with the number increasing every year. Many, of course, just love the idea of teaching. Many like the pay - $40,000 to start, $80,000 at the top end - and the long holidays.

But unless the union wants to argue the profession is attracting second-rate candidates, it's hard to see a case for big wage increases when prospective employees are delighted with the current conditions.

The politics of buying dead white men's clothes in Honduras

I bought a T-shirt yesterday, my first clothing purchase in Honduras. It was overdue. We packed the night before we left, weighed our bags and found we had to shed about 20 pounds worth of stuff to make the 50-pound per-person limit. The skimpy wardrobe got skimpier still.

In Honduras, as in Canada, I shop used. It's cheaper, I can afford better stuff and the clothes are softer and less scratchy. (I have an obsession with avoiding scratchy.)

Fortunately, there are lots of little stores offering 'Ropa Americana,' the stylish term for used clothes. Some are on racks, some in big heaps, and prices are reasonable - maybe $3 or $4 for a short-sleeved shirt.

They aren't really 'Ropa Americana.' Most are made in China or India or even Honduras. The maquiladoras here - special zones with no taxes, low minimum wages and few rules - have spawned a textile and clothing industry. It's odd to think of a shirt making its way from here to Vancouver and back again, like some migrating bird.

Still, it's a nice term, and better than some. When I was considering a Cuso International placement in Ghana, I read that second-hand clothes were called 'obroni wewu' - loosely translated as dead white man's clothes. (Literally, “a white man has died.”)

I had wondered how the clothes got from North America to here, especially the t-shirts for universities, sports teams and fun runs that are so commonly worn. (Often incongruously, like the aged, sun-wrinkled woman wearing a red t-shirt that said "I'm a little princess.")

And, hours after I bought my shirt, I went on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, apparently using a new algorithm that actually reads minds, arranged for a sponsored link on my page to Ropa al Mayreo. They have a giant warehouse in Miami and will ship 100-pound bales of used clothes - no rips or holes - to your door. They're vague on prices, but $1 to $1.50 a pound seems in the range. That's about $1 per item, but there are shipping costs too.

There's a continuing debate on the used clothing business, particularly in Africa. Some fear the loss of culture, as people dump traditional clothes for Abercombie and Fitch knockoffs. Ghana has promoted traditional dress on Fridays, kind of the opposite of our dress-down day.

And local clothing producers complain they can't compete and want the imports banned. (The issue is summarized nicely here.)

But really, governments better be handling the rest of their responsibilities well before they start dictating what people can wear.

And arguing that poor people - 67 per cent of Hondurans live in poverty, 43 per cent in extreme poverty - should pay more for clothes to prop up a domestic clothing industry is just cruel.

My new t-shirt is on the clothesline now, and I just went and checked. It's Fruit of the Loom brand. And it was made in Honduras.

Semana Santa in Honduras

We've made it through our first Semana Santa - Easter Week - in Copan Ruinas.

It's a fascinating phenomenon.

For starters, it's the year's big holiday, and much of the country is on the move. The public sector, and some businesses, shut down for the week; most operations just knock off early on Wednesday and don't re-open until Monday.

The tradition is that people travel for a brief break - to the beaches, or back home if they have moved away, or just somewhere different. The main bus terminal in San Pedro Sula handled some 1.3 million people in the week, mostly in the last five days. The roads are jammed, buses packed, prices rise and people crowd into the tourist spots. (That's not just true in Honduras; we avoided Semana Santa travel in Mexico after seeing pictures of beaches we knew as uncrowded staked out with tents from the high-tide line on back.)

And, of course, there is Easter. On Palm Sunday - the week before Easter, for those out of touch - there was a procession to the Catholic church on the square, with everyone carrying big palm branches. (Much more dramatic than the little folded palm crosses I remember from my Anglican youth.)

On Thursday, the night before Good Friday, they decorated two blocks with alfombras - literally carpets, but in this case elaborate scenes created on the street with coloured sawdust. Volunteers started work that night, laying down a base and using stencils to add colours from big bags of dyed sawdust. By about 2 a.m. they had created one block of scenes from the life of Jesus, and another of Mayan symbols. (The alfombras in the big cities are hugely elaborate.)

On Good Friday, there were morning and evening processions. We followed the morning group, which sets out from the church, people in robes carrying draped tables with large sculptures of Christ and the disciples, several hundred others following along. At each of the stations of the cross - 14 here - the procession stops and there is a Bible reading and brief sermon. The stations, on the cobbled streets, were decorated with draperies and a carpet of the long green pine needles that grow on the trees in the hills.

The sun beat down and it was roasting, in the low 30s, and the route led up steep, cobbled hills. It was impressive, especially when a group of women - mothers, obviously - came down from the Barrio Buena Vista carrying a platform with a haunted looking Mary, meeting with the main procession at Station 4, where Jesus meets his mother on the way to Calvary.

The spoken messages at each stop were interesting. The theme seemed to be how messed up Honduras has become - crime, corruption, drugs, alcohol - and that it was time to do something about it. (Though what was less than clear.)

When I watched celebrations from other cities on TV, the Catholic priests were talking about the same things. It appeared to be an orchestrated message, though less than half of Hondurans now identify as Catholic; evangelical churches have made great strides.

The evening procession was smaller, and the last few hundred yards were over the alfombras, scuffling them into obscurity. It was a mix of highly traditional rituals and low-budget technology. For music, a kid was carrying a $50 battery-power boom box, a guy walked in front of him holding a microphone, and a third person - who must have been deaf by the end of the day - walked in front with a giant white megaphone on his shoulder.

There was a fair amount of partying going on during Semana Santa as well. One of the messages in the procession was that people should be spending more time reflecting on Easter's meaning, and less on plans to hit the beach.

The president - Porfiro Lobo - made the same point in a statement as the week began. He urged all Hondurans to use Semana Santa as a time to reflect, and think about what they should and should not do. He suggested strongly he was spending the week at the family ranch doing just that.

But La Prensa found his photo on David Copperfield’s website, posing with the magician after catching his show in Las Vegas. It's a sore point, as many politicians apparently head to Miami and other U.S. destinations for the week, while most people pile into a bus and head to a crowded beach.

By Sunday morning, the sawdust was swept up. By the afternoon, things were back to normal.

But there was a cost to all that rushing around. The accidental death toll from the holiday included 29 people killed on the roads and 18 drownings. About 30 people drown in B.C. in a year. Honduras has twice the population, but 18 in a week shows a certain casualness about life and death that seems a problem down here.

'When the premier speaks, we would rather her comments not be reported'

North Shore News reporter Benjamin Alldritt has a great column on getting kicked out of a Christy Clark rally here.

Allldrit got a personal invitation from the local Liberal riding association. So did hundreds of other people. So he went to the meeting in a hotel, was admitted, got his name tag and was then booted out by Gabe Garfinkel, executive assistant to the premier. (Garfinkel was an aide to federal Liberal MP Joyce Murray who came over to the provincial payroll when Clark won the leadership.)

You have to leave, he said. It's not a media event. You shouldn't have been invited.

"When the premier speaks, we would rather her comments not be reported," Garfinkle said. "I'm sure you can understand that we don't want comments made in front of a private audience made public."

Let us count the gigantic failures here.

First, and most important, in promoting the notion that Clark wants to say one thing to several hundred Liberal supporters, but that it must be kept secret from the public. Fine, a strategy session with key people might need to be secret. But a speech to a throng of invited supporters hardly justifies secrecy, and creates the sense the premier has something to hide. (When in fact, as Alldritt notes, the speech was almost certainly the usual platitudes.)

Second, the hamhanded and dumb way Alldritt got the boot (although it did provide grist for a very nice column).

And third, the incompetence shown by the supposedly organized Liberals. If you do want to keep things secret as some sort of political strategy, or just to make supporters feel special, then you also need to manage the guest list so you don't invite journalists.

The result is that an innocuous event has become a political liability on several level.

But read the whole column here - it's worth your time.