The children's education fund: Even really stupid commitments should be honoured

Martyn Brown raises an interesting point about the NDP pledge to kill a really stupid piece of public policy the Campbell government put in place in 2007.

The Children’s Education Fund never made any sense. The Liberals said the government would put $1,000 for every child born in the province into a fund. Beginning in 2025, when the a teen graduated from high school, he or she would get the money, plus interest, for postsecondary training or education. Figure $2,200.

It was a goofy policy, pulled out of thin air when Gordon Campbell needed something to announce at the party’s 2006 convention.

And there have been suggestions for a couple of years - OK, perhaps just by me - to get rid of it.

In 2011, I wrote that the government was committing $47 million to the fund that year, money that was needed for services.

“There’s no logical basis for the government to decide that a tuition subsidy for students starting school in 2025 is a priority today — more important than caring for the disabled, improving health care or offering a tax cut to encourage employment growth," I wrote then.

“In fact, the notion that the government can predict the needs of students two decades in the future is dubious. Imagine the outgoing Socreds trying to come up with a tuition plan that would work for students in 2011.

“The amount, for example, could be a pittance compared to the cost of education more than a decade from now.

“Or alternately, a future government, given the need for skilled British Columbians, could have decided post-secondary education should be free to some qualifying students, or even all students. That’s not an outlandish notion, given the shift to a knowledge-based economy in the province....

“Why not take the $47 million and address today’s needs, through scholarships or education credits or tax breaks, or target First Nations’ high school graduation rates, or address other educational needs?

“It’s also bizarre that the fund makes no distinctions based on the needs of either the province, or the students.

“A multimillionaire’s child will get $2,000; so will a youth coming out of care, living on income assistance and trying to get an education. 

“A smart program would target bright students who couldn’t afford an education, and be based on merit and need. Or it could support education for students entering fields that were critical to the province’s future.”

By 2025, I noted, the government would have stashed more than $1 billion in the fund.

The government changed the plan this year, pledging to give parents a cheque for every child on their sixth birthdays, to put into an RESP.

Brown’s point is that parents who had babies between 2007 and today had a right to count on the money and taking it away violates a “social contract.” (And he acknowledges, implicitly, the irony of the argument, given his role in the Campbell government’s illegal ripping up of contracts with pubic sector unions.)

The programs needs to be axed.

But perhaps there was a commitment here, at least to the parents of children born since in 2007. It might be right to preserve the program in its original form for those families. After all, the money has been set aside.

Even stupid commitments probably should be honoured.

Vote for our musical Cuso volunteer video

This is utterly shameless, I admit.
Cuso International had a contest, inviting volunteers around the world to submit videos about the experience.
We entered, with a song featuring the accordion stylings of Jody Paterson and my guitar fumblings.
I kind of like it.
What I would like you to do is go the Cuso Facebook page and watch the video.
If you think it's kind of OK, you have to like both the Cuso Facebook page and our video to vote for us.

Footnote:
Should you want to sing along, here are the lyrics, to the tune of Leaving on Jet Plane,

All our bags are packed, we're standing here

About to be a volunteer

In a country Peace Corps left just weeks ago

Will we get gunned down? Or take up coke?

Will our workmates think we're quite the joke?

With our high-school Spanish messing up the show?

But we're flexible Cuso stock

We'll survive this culture shock

If capacity needs building, count us in

We're working in a new land

Don't know when we'll be back again

Our world won't be the same

We've met campesinos by the score,

We've learned most folks here are really poor

We know more about la roya than we should

We've been bounced down dirt roads, left to wait

Learned that 6 o'clock is more like 8

And that sunshine in December sure feels good

We're flexible Cuso stock

We'll survive the culture shock

If capacity needs building, we're your team

The power failures don't get us down

We've landed in a real nice town

And the guns aren't aimed at us, just worn with jeans

Are we changing culture? It's hard to tell

Communications is a real tough sell

In a country that has faith and not much more

But they love the photos, think the website's cool

The Facebook friends and the PowerPoints too

But will they keep it up when we walk out the door?

We're flexible Cuso stock

We've survived this culture shock

We're thriving in a most appealing way

Thank you for this chance to shine

In a land that has no sense of time

O Cuso...can we stay?

If a government can't provide licence plates... Part 2

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the Honduran government’s baffling inability to get licence plates into the hands of drivers.

I saw scads of cars and motorcycles without licence plates, and thought at first that people were just ignoring the law. 

But it turned out the government didn’t actually have the plates, and hadn’t for almost a year. That was a major hassle for drivers, who had to keep going back to the licensing office every month to get temporary permits, a process that took hours. 

And in a country with a big crime problem, some 330,000 vehicles and motorcycles without licence plates was unhelpful. 

The news stories were never clear why the government couldn’t get its act together.

A year later, and the story is back in the papers.

There are still about 200,000 vehicles without plates because the government can’t supply them.

The president mused about having prisoners make licence plates, but then learned the government is too broke to buy the needed equipment. 

It can’t afford to order plates, either, even though drivers’ licence fees should cover the costs (less than $20 to make a pair of plates).

This is new to me. In Canada, governments can borrow what they need. Deficits are debated, but, ultimately, if governments need licence plates or money to pay teachers or buy medical supplies, they just borrow a bit more, at pretty good rates.

Not in Honduras. Teachers plan a one-day strike tomorrow because they say they haven’t been paid. Buses weren’t running in the cities today, because owners say the government hasn’t paid promised subsidies. 

Road repairs have been stalled for a months, because the government can’t pay the contractors’ outstanding bills. It offered the companies a combination of cash and government bonds, but they weren’t keen. 

That’s not surprising. Honduras went to the international bond market this month to raise money. The rating agencies put them deep into junk bond territory. The issue raised $500 million, at 7.5-per-cent interest. (B.C. borrows at less than half that rate per cent.)

The president said the government could have sold more bonds, but he was worried the money would just be wasted. And a commission is to be set up to manage the money, to ensure it isn’t squandared. (Commissions are big here. Anytime a public body fails to perform, the response to seems to be to create a new one to oversee it, instead of just fixing the original governance problem.)

Anyway, back to the licence problem. No money. Prisoners can’t make them. 

So the government is looking at a public-private partnership, hoping to find a company that will take over the whole process in return for the chance to make a profit on licensing cars and drivers.

Those 3P agreements are very big in Honduras right now too. The government has signed a contract to hand over management of the country’s main port for 30 years. 

And I suppose model cities are a way of privatizing government itself.

It’s an appealing concept for Honduras, much more than in North America. Private companies can borrow more cheaply than government for infrastructure, a significant saving on large projects. Government is judged corrupt and incompetent. So the idea of handing responsibility to a third party is appealing.

But there’s an obvious problem.

A government that can’t manage the problem or deliver the service - like licence plates - probably can’t negotiate a good private-public partnership deal either.

Do-it-yourself gated communities and police in Honduras

Gated communities are different in Honduras.

New subdivisions in San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa, the two big cities, tend to be built behind walls and gates. But that happens in North America too.

But people in existing neighbourhoods also throw up their own barricades and gates, blocking city streets into the neighbourhood with concrete blocks or corrugated steel and allowing limited, controlled entrance.

There are no permits, or traffic studies. One day you can drive through, and the next you can’t - at least without showing ID and explaining where you’re going.

La Prensa reported 18 San Pedro Sula neighbourhoods have blocked traffic so far, with more making plans.

The people who live in the barrios say crime has fallen, and they’re happy.  

Urban residents have no confidence in police or the justice system, so they come up with their own solutions.

Of course, the people in other neighbourhoods, who now have travel another 20 blocks to get to work aen’t so keen. Neither are bus and taxi drivers who don’t know from week to week which roads will be closed next.

And of course, the barriers don’t actually reduce the number of criminals or crime. They just shift it from one neighbourhood, where people have enough money or organization to put up barriers, to another where they don’t.

When the justice system doesn’t work, people eventually take measures into their own hands.

By building barricades. Or by paying for their own surrogate police forces.

And Honduras has a ton of them. Last month, a UN Human Rights working group on mercenaries urged the Honduran government to get a grip on the explosion of private security forces.

There are more than 700 registered private security companies, many more unregistered, and some 70,000 armed private guards. That’s five times the number of police officers in the country, and twice the police and military forces combined.

You get used to armed guards outside the banks, or riding shotgun - literally - on the delivery trucks.

But 70,000 is an astonishing number. And the UN group noted they are at risk of becoming “a substitute for competent and accountable police.” It’s deeply flawed, but there is at least theoretical accountability for real police that doesn’t exist for the private police forces.

And, again, private police forces only protect those who can pay. 

Or, the UN group warned, they may go farther. “Human rights violations allegedly committed by private security companies are not investigated, perpetrators remain unprosecuted and victims do not have access to remedies.” 

None of this is easy to sort out. If your store has been robbed a few times and you can afford a guard with a shotgun, then it becomes a wise investment. If people are riding through your neighbourhood and committing robberies, maybe killings, then barricading streets seems a good idea.

Or if you live in a remote community and a couple of guys keep stealing things from the rickety houses of everyone else in the community, it makes sense to deal justice directly.

What all these responses to crime have in common is that they don’t change the reality of life in the country. They create a bit more security for some, and less for others, and increase injustice, rather than restoring it.

Barricades and private security guards are no substitute for a police and legal system that actually works.

It's school deworming time in San Pedro Sula

After more than a year in Honduras, I remain in a state of near-constant amazement.

San Pedro Sula is the country’s largest city, with glitzy malls - way nicer than any in Victoria, our old hometown - and all the North American fast food chains.

Take this, you'll feel better

But El Tiempo reported this week that students at César López Pérez kicked off the first day of deworming, 2013.

Some 700 kids lined up for the chewable tablets, thanks to the municipality’s Healthy Schools Program. By the end of the campaign, 96,000 students in 344 schools will have been dewormed.

It’s the fourth year for the effort, supported by Operation Blessing, a U.S.-based charity/aid organization.

Deworming is likely a good thing. (You can never be sure, I’ve learned. It’s always possible someone’s brother-in-law has the monopoly on Worm-Be-Gone tablets and is making big money.)

And I might not have thought twice if the campaign had been in a rural community, where water and food supplies would likely be suspect.

But the idea of mass deworming campaign for kids in the country’s largest urban centre is a pretty stark reminder of how far Honduras has to go.

Lib MLA: 'Why would you rent from somebody who didn’t support you?'

“If you contact every MLA in this province... find out if they don’t rent from supporters.” 

I’ve been surprised this story and interview with Vernon-Monashee MLA Eric Foster hasn’t attracted more attention.

Especially his claim that MLAs routinely make a point of renting office space - with tax dollars - from people who contribute to their campaign.

Foster has been criticized by the auditor general for having taxpayers pick up the bills for a near-total renovation of the building he chose for his constituency office.

Especially as the building was bought just before the election by a family that contributed to his campaign. One of the co-owners was also hired by Foster as his constituency assistant.

It looks bad, especially as Foster rejected the less costly office occupied by his Liberal predecessor.

Taxpayers cover leasehold improvements for constituency offices - usually things like creating a meeting room or replacing worn-out flooring.

But Foster acknowledges that he chose a building that was bsically a shell. Taxpayers, the auditor general noted, paid for “purchasing and installing a complete forced air heating/cooling system including a four-ton heat pump and 75,000 BTU furnace, replacing the building's wiring system, installing vapour barriers in exterior walls and purchasing and installing a new double paned 18-foot by nine-foot storefront window and new plumbing including gas piping." 

That’s a great deal for the landlords. Their property is worth a lot more thanks to major renovations.

Not so good for taxpayers. 

Foster talked with Marshall Jones of Info-Tel news about the deal. The legislature comptroller approved it, he says.

Asked about the appearance of preferential treatment for a donor to his campaign, Foster was unrepentant.

“Why would you rent from somebody who didn’t support you?” he asked.

“If you contact every MLA in this province and ask them who they rent from, find out if they don’t rent from supporters,” he said.

Any business person is going to buy from someone who supports their business, he added.

Except, of course, the businesspeople are spending their own money.

Update:

Anon makes a good point in the comments.

If you want to spend more than $25,000 on goods or services in government, you are required to go through a competitive bidding process. It’s a away of getting the best deal and avoiding favoritism or corruption.

But MLAs don’t believe the rules that apply to everyone else in government should apply to them.

Which inevitably raises the question - why not?

La Moskitia: The road less travelled for a reason

Part of the regular route to La Moskitia (Jody Paterson)

Tourists don’t much go to La Moskitia.

The vast rainforest in southern Honduras, bordered by the Caribbean and Nicaragua, is an extraordinary natural wonder. It includes the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, jungles, lagoons and miles of untouched beach.  It’s home to Garifuna, Miskito and Pech communities, with distinct cultures. 

But all that empty space also makes it attractive to narcos shipping cocaine from South America to U.S. markets. The risk of running into narcotrafficantes is tiny, but it’s not good for tourism.

And more significantly, it’s really hard to get there, and to get around. 

We finished a meeting in Tela, a great Honduran beach town, and set out for Tocoa, midway to La Moskitia. Seven hours later - the last stretch hair-raising as our driver tried to pass anything that moved in our bus, long retired from some U.S. school district - we arrived.

The next morning we piled into a pickup headed for Batalla. That’s the only public transportation. Trucks run from Tocoa, with passengers and freight. It’s about $20 to sit inside, $15 to ride in the truck bed, crammed in with half-a-dozen people, propane tanks, crates and mysterious bags and boxes. 

That’s a lot of money for people here. Workers in the region’s vast African palm plantations are paid $5 or $6 a day.

Our destination, Palacios, was just across the lagoon from Batalla. (We were bound for La Moskitia because CASM, the organization my partner works with, has projects there.)

The first stretch was a paved highway. Then a ridiculously bad dirt road. Then almost an hour on tracks running ruler- straight through African palm plantations. 

The plantations are eerie. Rows of palm trees, planted in a perfect pattern, with no other plant life. Palm oil is hot right now, for food products and biofuel, and there is a rush to plant more and more trees. That has led to violent land clashes between powerful industrial interests and campesinos who claim the same land. Some 88 people have died in the last two years.

We came to a narrow lagoon crossing. There was no bridge. A small wooden platform, mounted on plastic barrels, nudged the shore. Boys put down two 12-inch planks and, after picking up four more passengers, we bumped onto the boat. A rope was tied to trees on each bank. The boys clambered on the ferry and hauled us across.

And then the road got strange. We were beside the Caribbean. A trail through the sand dunes led to the beach. The truck bounced through the dunes, across the beach, struggling and pitching through the sand, veering out into the waves to cross streams flowing into the ocean.

And at the end of the road, all the travel is by boat.

All part of the adventure for us. 

But a major barrier to any efforts to any economic development in the region.

We visited Plaplaya, a Garifuna community of about 800 people on a strip of land between the lagoon and miles of deserted Caribbean beaches. (The Garifuna are a culture made up of South American Indians and African slaves who blended on St. Vincent and were exiled to Roatan by the British in 1797, eventually settling along the coast. They’ve maintained their own language and culture.)

Planning the wine business

Plaplaya has a school, and the men catch fish and the women garden, especially yucca, a staple food, but there is little non-subsistence economic activity. 

CASM is working with a group of about 15 women on a microbusiness project. They each contribute $5 a month to create capital, attend workshops on rights and leadership and business. Their plan is to start making wine from the sea grapes that grow wild along the beach.

It’s a good idea. But getting the wine to an outside market will take a 45-minute boat ride and a four-hour truck ride. 

Making a sales trip to Trujillo, where there are tourists who might buy the wine, will require the same trip, plus another hour on a bus. And the roundtrip will cost more than $50 and require an overnight stay - a pretty big hit for a co-op that is raising $75 each month in working capital.

The isolation isn’t all bad, of course. Other Garifuna communities in Honduras are facing battles for their land as developers and agricultural companies covet the beachfront communities and land. 

But Plaplaya and other communities in the region - and the 80,000 residents - pay a significant price for their isolation.

The main street in Plaplaya (Yet there is one new SUV, despite no road access)

Footnote: Transportation is always a problem for remote communities. But it’s a much broader issue in Honduras. The construction sector claims 70 per cent of the road system is in disrepair, and it certainly seems that way. Maintenance barely exists - unless you count the people on the highway shovelling dirt into a pothole and holding out a bucket for drivers’ contributions. And most work has been stalled because the government hasn’t paid contractors. (Partly because of disagreements over the work, partly because there is no money.)

Liberal MLAs should be ashamed of role in scandal

The sordid, bumbling ethnic outreach scandal has sealed the Liberals' fate in the coming election.

It has also finished Christy Clark’s leadership. She is responsible for the actions of the government, for choosing the senior managers, for not demanding to be kept informed, for remaining willfully blind. 

She failed as a leader. She failed the citizens, and the people who put their trust in the Liberal party.

But what about the Liberal MLAs? This is supposed to be a system in which citizens elect representatives who speak for them and share in responsibility for governing. MLAs are responsible for the conduct of government, or the opposition.

Liberal MLAs also failed. They abandoned their responsibilities and let the premier’s office and political staffers run amok. They didn’t ask questions about who was hired or what they were doing, or set standards. 

These are $100,000 a year jobs, representing voters who have placed considerable trust in the men and women they send to Victoria.

Instead, MLAs vote the party line. They defend the indefensible. They inexplicably give up their right and responsibility to represent their constituents, and cede all power to the premier’s office and political operatives. 

Which is not why most chose to run.

All the candidates in the coming election should think about this scandal, the failure of Liberal MLAs to exercise their responsibilities and the dire consequences - not just for the party, but for democracy.

Racing through jungle rivers in the night

Sweeping through a narrow jungle river at high speed, in a long, narrow crowded boat, as a searchlight picks out trees crowding the banks in the darkness - business travel didn’t used to be like this.

We’ve gone to where the road ends and far, far beyond.

Travel in Honduras is often an adventure, but last week took it to a new, Indiana Jones level.

The boat journey, about four hours, was the highlight. We left Batalla at dusk. The collectivos - shared boats to the heart of La Moskitia - don’t leave until the last truck has arrived at the end of the road in the Garifuna village, delivering passengers and goods for roadless communities down the line.

The boat is a pipante. The traditional versions - still much in use - are hollowed out of a log, long, narrow and barely above the water. Men fish and paddle the lagoons to forage in the jungle, families travel, hand-carved paddles moving the log boats through the water.

The collectivos follow the same design, though larger. Some 40-feet long, less than six feet wide, flat-bottomed and with about 18 inches of freeboard.

We cruised down the first lagoon, then through a canal so shallow the boy had had to jump out and pull us to deeper water. Then down a river, with scores of egrets settling in trees for the night.

Past Garifuna villages and isolated settlements and suspiciously large new houses with open launches in front powered by twin 200-hp outboards. (Some questions are best not asked in the region, a centre for drug transport to northern markets.)

By the time we entered the next large lagoon, it was fully dark. We passed another pipante full of travellers, and I realized none of the boats had running lights.

The waves picked up a bit. The freight - including our packs - was in the front, covered with a tarp. There were six rows of benches, with three passengers in each. Passengers shared green sheets of plastic to pull up over our heads when the spray splashed over us.

At the end of the lagoon, we slowed and picked our way along the shore as the driver played a searchlight along the dense forest until he found an improbably small river entrance - perhaps 10 yards wide.

Then he opened the outboard up, and we swooped and swerved through the channel. Our bow wave swept through mangroves and water hyacinth and floating grasses rose and fell. In the dark. Openings appeared magically just when it appeared we would run aground.

The shore, glimpsed in the starlight, changed constantly - grasses, trees, a long stretch of six-foot tall fan palms that looked like waving creatures in the star light. Triffids maybe.

Then a light flickered from shore, and we pulled into a makeshift log dock, where a cluster of people waited. We unloaded a few passengers and lot of goods, took on some more passengers with their belongings and set out again. A cluster of boys struck a gangster pose for a photo.

The jungle closed in, the channel became even narrower and the boat still moved impossibly quickly, skidding through turns, brushing past thick trees growing from the water, the spotlight playing over the trees and vines, bats darting through the bright tunnel. When we had to slow, the night came alive with sounds of the jungle.

Stars, jungle, an outboard motor, river banks pressing in - part Heart of Darkness, part the grandest Disneyland ride ever.

We slowed suddenly in the dark, because two other boats were in the channel, a smaller one unloading melons into another pipante.

We were stranded in shallows again, this time both the boat chica and the driver, stepping into to the muck to push os free.

Then out into Laguna Brus, a giant body of water separated from the Caribbean by a sandbar. 

We picked up speed for the run to the town of Brus, our destination. There were more stars than I have ever seen in Canada, and under the light the water turned to a light grey, so it seemed we were racing through clouds. Burst of phospherence flashed by in the wake.

It was a painfully long trip by the time we pulled up to the dock in Brus, a town of about 8,000 that can’t be reached by road. 

It would have been spectacular in the day time. But it was unforgettable at night.

Footnote: The boats leave Batalla in the late afternoon when the trucks arrive. The truck drivers and helpers sleep there, then head back to Tocoa in the morning, leaving early enough to allow a return trip. Which meant we had to catch a return boat at 4 a.m. in Brus to get back in time to pile into a waiting truck. A good chance to see dawn over the lagoons.

They occupied the church, and why that's a good thing

I went down to check out the church occupation in the main square today, as it entered its fifth day.

The Catholic church is the dominant building in Copan Ruinas, as in most Honduran towns. It’s nice - two bell towers, a centre tower with a clock that usually shows the right time. 

Right now, the facade is spotted with hand-lettered signs protesting - politely - the transfer of the local priest.

It’s only the second local protest I’ve been aware of since we’ve been here. The first was a road blockade on the highway to Guatemala when people got fed up with a couple of months of frequent power outages.

I like protests, even if I disagree with the cause. (Hate groups and their ilk excepted.) It seems good if people take a stand for what they believe in. 

This one is especially interesting because it involves the church’s role in society.

Some parishioners are angry because the bishop, based in Santa Rosa de Copan, about three hours away, has transferred 14 priests in the diocese, including Father Daniel Humberto Corea of the Church of St. Joseph the Worker in Copan. He’s been here for 13 years and has many supporters.

The decision was at least partly political. The bishop thought the priests were getting too active in joining with some parishioners’ push for social and economic change. 

The bishop says the rotation is normal, but critics say, convincingly, that’s simply not true based on past practice and canon law.

And the bishop undermined his own position when he complained the protests are being led by supporters of Libre, a new leftish party that could do well in November’s presidential elections.

The Roman Catholic church is still important here. Newspapers regularly cover statements by the church on public issues. A Honduran cardinal is a longshot candidate for the next pope.

And it has a political past. In the 1960s, the doctrine of liberation theology began to gain ground among Catholic clergy in Latin America. Priests and parishioners saw a religious duty to champion the poor and oppressed and, logically, denounce the rich and oppressive.

That made many people nervous. The U.S.government saw Latin America as another front in the Cold War. It didn’t want the Catholic church even indirectly threatening governments the U.S. saw as allies. Powerful people in Central American countries didn’t want the church pushing for changes in the status quo.

And of course, many people in the church hierarchy - including the outgoing pope - were unhappy with the movement.

It wasn’t just a philosophical debate. Groups in the U.S. - including, famously, Oliver North of the Iran-Contra scandal in the Reagan years - encouraged and funded evangelical missions to Latin America as a counterbalance.

They worked. 

In the 1960s, Honduras was virtually a Catholic country. 

Reliable numbers are hard to come by, but a 2007 national survey found 47 percent of respondents identified themselves as Roman Catholics, and 36 percent as evangelical Protestants, a huge change.

Unlike Canada, almost everyone counts themselves as Christian, and a member of some church. Hondurans are genuinely baffled when I try to explain Canadians’ lack of religious affiliation.

And, unlike in Canada, churches don’t seem to be much interested in helping others or building a stronger community. The things Canadian churches do - providing shelters, running meal programs - just aren’t considered.

Partly, that’s a result of the way evangelical churches have developed. In Copan Ruinas, there are a huge number of tiny, informal churches, often meeting in homes. Congregations are too small to consider launching any collective efforts to make the community better. (That concept might not exist anyway; charity appears to extend, at most, to immediate family. There is no real equivalent to a United Way campaign or tradition of philanthropy here, even among the very rich.)

It’s also, I expect, a legacy of the Roman Catholic church’s decision to step back from an activist theology and focus on the next world, not this one.

Whatever the reasons, Honduran churches are failing. They could be champions of an effort to work with others to make a better life for Hondurans. They aren’t, at least as far as I can tell.

If the people occupying the church on our square can change that a little, more power to them.

Footnote: Hundreds of faith-based groups from North America come to Honduras every year to help people, building schools and water systems and providing health care. 

I recall discussions about whether people without religious faith had a reason to help others. Of course they do, I would say.

But it’s interesting that the people who actually show up to do the work almost all share a religious conviction of some kind.

On the road to Tomalá, and the miracle spring

So there I was in Tomalá, having coffee with the mayor, perched on a couch in a dark living room, bags of newly harvested coffee stacked along the wall.

I had been minding my own business, sitting outside on the hotel’s plastic chairs, working on case studies on a couple of interesting women’s projects being done by OCDIH, the NGO I’m helping. (We love acronyms in development land.)

Then the mom of the family who owned the hotel brought her son, Edgar, and pushed him to talk to me. Last year, they sent him and his younger sister to an English-language collegio - high school - in a town a couple of hours away. She wanted to make sure the kids were learning.

They were. We talked, and their English was great. The parents stood watching critically.

Then the mayor came by, with a TV journalist from Globo, doing a piece on Tomalá and its big fair. 

The mayor wanted me to come to see a sacred spring, water with healing properties thanks to a sighting of the Virgin Mary there.

How could you say no? Simply by being a gringo, I had a vague celebrity status.

So we walked - the mayor, his wife, the hotel owner (an ex-mayor) and his wife and brother, the kids and the TV guy - up the cobblestone street a block and down a lovely path to El Posito de la Virgen. 

It’s a little pool, very clear, where water apparently trickles out at the base of a 15-metre rock face. It’s credited with healing powers, though I never really got the back story.

Some people were there, washing up. The TV reporter filmed the mayor talking about the spring with his little handicam. The mayor and his wife downed glasses of water from the pool. (I passed.) 

I noticed the TV guy kept framing his shots to get me in the background - I supposed it made it look like there were gringo tourists in town. He even did a brief interview, in which I uttered flattering generalities about Tomalá and Honduras in bad Spanish.

The mayor hopes publicity for the spring would attract devote Roman Catholics to the town, providing a badly needed economic boost.

That seems a long shot. Tomalá is pretty enough. But it’s almost in El Salvador. To get there from Copan de Ruinas - the nearest town with many visitors - we took four buses. The actual travel time was about seven or eight hours. Half the trip was jammed into rapiditos with too many people. 

And the last hour was up a dusty dirt road  in the mountains to get to Tomalá. The climate in the province of Lempira’s high country is extreme even by Honduran standards, with six months of drought followed by six months of torrential rain. The road would be frightening in the rainy season.

Tomalá, without the vendors

The mayor noted that the town is pushing to have the road paved. But Honduras has about 70 stalled construction projects now because the government hasn’t paid the contractors. Main highways are potholed and risky. Unless Tomalá’s spring does have miraculous powers, the chances aren’t good.

I liked the mayor’s optimism. And it’s surely necessary. There’s some subsistence farming and a little coffee. But it’s hard to see how anyone earns a living in Tomalá. (It’s not even on the drug transit routes.) 

The town - about 6,000 people including the settlements in the hills - hopes that it will get dividends if a talked-about hydro project goes ahead in the nearby mountains, but those tend to be developed by foreign companies with proceeds to the national government.

Judging by the number of people who tried out a “Hello, how are you” greeting, the town likely does benefit from remittances from residents who have made the long, dangerous to the U.S. (About 19 per cent of Honduras GDP is money sent home.)

There were visitors. We were there, because CASM, the organization my partner works with, has an office and she came to talk about communications and learn what they do. There were a half-dozen people from Minnesota, down on a project to hand out glasses in nearby, even-poorer villages. (Quite a good project - there’s a story here.)

And that weekend, the town was jammed with vendors for the saint’s day feria. Literally jammed. Makeshift stands were set up everywhere there was a three-metre square space, selling everything. Clothes, shoes, housewares, fruit, dried fish, vegetables, candy  - lots of candy - tools, and, of course, meals. 

Kitchens were cobbled together in a few hours. Hammer together a rickety wood surface - always, it seemed with reused wood and nails. Then top it with adobe, build a couple of rough cookstoves out of more adobe, start the wood fire and away you go. Vendors slept in the stalls at night.

It was festive. The fair saves Tomaláns, if that’s what they’re called, the two-hour bus ride to San Marcos to shop. (We changed buses in San Marcos; dustiest place I have ever been. If you are on the run someday, I’d suggest hiding out there.)

But not festive enough to attract tourists.

Which explains the mayor’s enthusiasm for the miraculous spring. It might seem a little desperate, but he’s trying. Better desperation than hopelessness. 

Passing the hat - or plastic bottle - to raise ransom money

I wrote this almost two weeks ago, but hesitated in posting.

I’m a visitor in Honduras, and reluctant to appear judgmental about my hosts. I don’t want to draw unwanted attention. And someone was in danger.

But the rumour mill says he was released, so I guess it’s OK now.

----------------

It was the day to take the hogar kids to the pool. So Sunday morning Jody went to buy mortadella - bologna - and bread and the various supplies needed for lunch. She bought a cake - $6.50 - because Carina’s 16th birthday was the next Tuesday, and Jody has a soft spot for teens.

On the street, she met a woman we sort of know, a teacher at the private bilingual school, staffed by a few Hondurans and semi-volunteer gringos. The woman had a five-gallon water bottle and was collecting donations.

A young Honduran man known at the school - I think a family member works there - had been kidnapped Saturday. Now there was a campaign to get donations to pay the ransom.

He must be well known. Jody got a lift in a mototaxi on the way back from Angelitos, the orphanage/foster home, and the driver said the soccer team he coached - uniformed with Real Madrid shirts through Jody and supporters in Victoria - had cancelled its game because of the kidnapping. 

And there were donation bottles in Bodega Gloria when I stopped to shop on the way back from the pool.

This is wrong on so many levels.

Practically, shouldn’t the kidnappers have done a little research before they grabbed this guy? It seems poor planning to snatch someone whose family has to do a fundraising drive to come up with ransom. (Though perhaps kidnapping someone from a richer family brings more police pressure.)

The gossip is that the kidnappers wanted five million lempiras - $250,000. I’d guess there was about $15 in the container at the store. (Jody gave $5.) The ransom demand did not seem well thought-out. 

But maybe it was just an asking price.

It’s hard to imagine a comparable situation in Canada. If someone is kidnapped, the police take over. There might be a ransom drop, but the family doesn’t hold a 50-50 draw at the Legion to try to come up with money to pay the kidnappers.

In Honduras, people don’t expect the police to ride to the rescue. They sort things out as best they can, without the state’s help.

Kidnappings aren’t common here. We heard a hotel owner was kidnapped by a bumbling gang just before we came down. Things went wrong and he was killed. A doctor was snatched last year in Santa Rita, the next town over, and ransomed after a week or so.

And, I hasten to add, gringos don’t seem to be targets. Even kidnappers must know how hard it is to transfer money from North America to Honduras. And police reaction would likely be more intense.

But it is odd to live in a country where you pass the hat - or, more accurately, the water bottle - to buy someone’s freedom.

The kids from the hogar had a good time at the pool. I’m hoping the fundraising drive is going well too.

When home is the most dangerous place for women

Honduras, like most of Latin America, has a problem with domestic violence.

I’ve been working through a research report, trying to do a Spanish summary of document only in available in English.

The report, Violence Against Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, is both grim and fascinating.

Grim because women are getting battered. The study compiled the results of massive surveys from 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

In Honduras, 9.9 per cent of women between 15 and 49 reported experiencing partner violence in the previous 12 months. That puts Honduras in the middle of the pack for the region. (The survey covered those who were or had been in a relationship.)

That’s five times the rate in Canada, where people rightly see domestic violence as a serious problem.

The Pan American Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed the survey responses, which covered not just prevalence, but risk factors and attitudes.

There were some important findings.

For example, Honduran woman whose first marriage or common-law relationship was formed when they were under 15 were more than twice as likely to experience partner violence as women who waited until they were 25. Even delaying a few years significantly reduced the rate of violence.

Likewise, Honduran woman who had their first child between 15 and 17 were 75 per cent more likely to experience partner violence than women whose first birth came after they were 21.

Convincing teens to wait - not easy - could make a large difference.

So could dealing with alcohol abuse. The research looked at triggers, and found 30 per cent to 50 per cent of women cited the man’s drunkenness or drug use as the “cause” of the violence. (Mostly drunkenness.)

Then there are the cultural issues. In Canada, the number of women who would say partner violence was sometimes justified simply wouldn’t register in a survey.

In Honduras, 15.6 per cent of Honduran women between 15 and 49 who had been in a relationship agreed wife-beating is sometimes justified. That rose to 20 per cent in rural Honduras, home to about half of the population.

Legitimate reasons, according to those women, included neglecting children or housework (12.1 per cent), going out without telling partner (6.2 per cent), arguing or disagreeing with partner (6.1 per cent), burning the food (5.6 per cent) and refusing sex (3.2 per cent).

The responses raise an underlying issue. The surveys didn’t ask men about violence, triggers or attitudes. If one in five rural women think wife-beating can be justified, what would men say?

It was also striking how few women sought any kind of help. In Honduras, almost two-thirds of women kept the violence a secret. Only 34 per cent told anyone they had been assaulted by their partners - even a family member or friend.

And only 19 per cent - fewer than one in five - sought institutional help. They didn’t go to police, or social services, or a doctor or women’s group. (About 11 per cent of Honduran women experiencing partner violence sought help from police or a protection agency; nine per cent from a church or religious institution; 4.5 per cent from a hospital or health centre; 0.1 per cent from a women’s organization or NGO.)

Why not? In Honduras, 36 per cent of those not seeking help considered it unnecessary - the violence not serious, or normal. About 27 per cent were afraid of retaliation or more violence; 17 per cent were ashamed; seven per cent didn’t know where to go; six per cent didn’t believe that anyone would help.

There are some obvious lessons. Give women somewhere to go to get help. Create women’s networks and shelters that provide support, especially in navigating the system. Work to shift the shame from them to the abusers. Fight a culture that normalizes and justifies wife-beating. Make partner violence a health issue.

And make men and boys take ownership of the issue.

This should be urgent. Not just because so many lives are being damaged. Or even because the costs are so enormous, as the report sets out.

But because of the future being created. The study found “the single consistent and significant risk factor across all surveys” was a history of ‘father beat mother.’ Women who grew up in violent homes were twice as likely to endure partner violence in their own lives. 

Inaction today means children are learning to be the next generation bringing fear, violence and sorrow to too many homes.

Maybe it's time to stop waiting for a miracle

It’s the festival of Our Lady of Suyapa in Honduras, a celebration of a tiny carved image of Mary, the mother of Jesus, that’s venerated here.

The carving - less than three inches tall - is credited with miraculous healing powers. Suyapa is seen as a benelovent force looking after Hondurans when times are hard, as they usually are.

Sunday is the main celebration of the 250-year-old icon. Thousands of people have been making the pilgrimage to the Tegucigalpa neighbourhood where the caarving, usually in a small church, is moved to a basilica built specially for its display.

I haven’t been yet, but would like to. We went to see the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City, and the devotion of the faithful - and the sprawling market of commemorative items for pilgrims - were impressive. You shuttled past the image on moving sidewalks inside the church, so people wouldn’t linger too long. (It was still a much warmer experience than joining the long lines visiting Ho Chi Minh’s tomb in Hanoi, where guards watch closely for any signs of disrespect - like having your hands behind your back - as you approach the bleached body.)

Marco Cáceres of Honduras Weekly, the leading English-language news and analysis source for the country, wrote an interesting piece headlined “No harm in a  little idol worship.”

Suyapa, he wrote, “represents one of the few things in Honduras today that can help bring people together and get them to put aside their differences, even if it's just temporary.”

“While it may seem silly placing so much credence in a tiny piece of carved cedar, there's no real harm in it, and if it can unite Hondurans in silence, stillness, and prayer... well, that's no small achievement,” Cáceres wrote.

Perhaps. 

Canada is a resolutely secular society today, to an extent that baffles most Hondurans I talk to, who assume everyone has some religious affiliation. So partly, this a question of perspective. And I genuinely respect faith in a higher power and the chances of a better world.

But I worry a bit about faith as a substitute for action.

In San Pedro Sula a few months ago, the taxi driver taking us from our hotel to the bus station was a chatty guy, talking about getting deported from the U.S. after 12 years and the perils of being a cabbie in the city. He had been robbed, a pistol held against his head, he said, an occupational hazard.

But now, Raul said, life was safer. He had arranged to be on call for the hotel, and had other regular customers, and no longer had to do street pickups.

“Gracias a dios,” he added. You hear that a tremendous amount here. 

I’m too polite to talk about religion, and too inarticulate to engage in philosophical discussions in Spanish.

But I often want to point out that while God might have been helpful, Raul was the one who made the difficult trip to the U.S., saved some money, got a decent car, made a sales pitch to the hotel and delivered reliable service so they would keep on using him.

At the least he should say thanks to God and and his own efforts. 

Partly, of course, it’s just an expression, a way of showing faith. 

But there is also a sense of real fatalism - that individual efforts and community efforts don’t really matter as much as divine forces. And fatalism and learned helplessness can be close relations.

Congress has just passed a law making Suyapa and the area around the basilica part of the country’s cultural heritage. La Prensa quoted Rigoberto Chang Castillo, the congress member who sponsored the bill. He said the decree acknowledges that Honduras is a secular state that respects religious freedom, but has deep Christian roots, “the values of which all build on the principles that underpin our society and strengthen the culture of peace and democracy.”

Except when you have the highest murder rate in the world, and a democracy that can be kindly described as troubled, maybe it’s time to rely less on faith, and more on changing things through action.

'In many ways, the state is no longer functioning'

I'm still trying to figure out how things work, or don't work, in Honduras by reading the newspapers.
It's baffling. (Maybe it would also be baffling for a Honduran trying to figure out Canada by reading the newspapers there.)
I've been struck lately by the sense that there are a lot of reports on things going wrong, but little analysis to pull them into some coherent framework, or show how they're related.
La Prensa reported that the public hospital in Tocoa, a city of about 45,000, is being evicted by the building owner because the health ministry hasn't paid the rent for 10 months. But it didn't say why the hospital is in a rented building or why the payments weren't made, or what would happen to patients. In the same vein, the meal suppliers are cutting off service to the main teaching hospital in Tegucigalpa, the capital, because they say they haven't been paid. The hospital administration was such a mess that the government transferred management to the University of Honduras last year. The new regime won't accept responsibility for bills predating its takeover.
Fortunately, Associated Press reporter Alberto Arce, based in Tegucigalpa for about a year, has done an excellent job of looking at the bigger picture.

"Street surveillance cameras in one of the world's most dangerous cities were turned off last week because Honduras' government hasn't paid millions of dollars it owes. The operator that runs them is now threatening to suspend police radio service as well.

"Teachers have been demonstrating almost every day because they haven't been paid in six months, while doctors complain about the shortage of essential medicines, gauze, needles and latex gloves.

"This Central American country has been on the brink of bankruptcy for months, as lawmakers put off passing a budget necessary to pay for basic government services. Honduras is also grappling with $5 billion in foreign debt, a figure equivalent to last year's entire government budget . . . ."

It's worth reading the entire piece here.

(Arce also took an interesting look at his own work life in a report here.)