As you have probably heard, cantaloupes exported from Honduras have been accused of causing a salmonella outbreak that has affected 50 people. The FDA has essentially banned cantaloupe import, at least from the company responsible, which has major ramifications for the cantaloupe export industry. The Honduran government has responded to this crisis in various ways: earlier this week, Honduran president Mel Zelaya was interviewed on CNN and broke open a melon, cut a slice, and proceeded to feast on it without fear; yesterday, three top Honduran officials traveled to Washington to fight the ban.
So while North Americans are fearing death by melon, some Honduran workers are fearing death by starvation. Ok, that's a little dramatic, but according to yesterday's newspaper, 1,800 employees have already been laid off. In a country whose major economic activity is exporting, one anomaly in the market can be almost catastrophic, at least for the people who are absolutely dependent on the foreign market for their livelihood.
Perhaps this warrants a comment on export in general. In February, Amanda and I had the opportunity to visit the largest shipping port in Central America, just up the road from San Pedro Sula in Puerto Cortez. As I said before, Honduras is an export country. It ships coffee, bananas, pineapples, watermelons, cantaloupes, clothing, mangoes, car harnesses, papayas, grapefruit, plantains, and much more all over North America and Europe.
Environmentally, those are a lot of miles of shipping.
Economically, Honduras is absolutely dependent on the markets in other countries.
If the coffee market is flooded with cheap coffee from Asia, Honduran farmers make nothing. If the banana crop is wiped out by a hurricane, the country takes a major economic blow. What does it mean, as a North American, to be tied to Central America in this way? Our tastes and whims have such a direct effect on families in Honduras being able to eat, yet we don't know much about where our food and consumer products actually comes from -- the faces behind those who sew our shirts and pick our mangoes. When you meat a struggling coffee farmer who pleads with you to buy fairly traded coffee, it demands a new sense of urgency. By choosing to not buy fairly traded coffee, I'm essentially telling him that his life is not worth the few dollars more per pound I would have to pay. All of our consumer choices have a direct effect on actual people, and this realization has been haunting me, and will continue to haunt me as I begin to rethink my consumer choices now and in the future.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Hondurans in New Orleans
There is a nice article on the MCC news website about a group of Hondurans and Guatemalans who spent two weeks in New Orleans volunteering for Mennonite Disaster Service, helping to construct homes and sharing common experiences of hope after a hurricane. Click here to read the article.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The Canadians came and went
Our first big learning tour is over and we are still in the "well, what do we do now?" stage of our recovery. The whole trip went well; we had a great group of participants from the Canadian Food Grains Bank, and I think Andrew and I learned more in a little over two weeks than in the last few months. The focus of the trip was on food security and was advertised as a "food, faith and justice" tour. Some highlights:
1. Playing soccer with the youth group from the Mennonite church in Tegucigalpa - kind of an embaressing show from us gringos, but fun - I've been wanting to play soccer since we got here.
2. A visit to AFE - Amor, Fe y Esperanza (love, faith, and hope) - this is the school started for children living in the dump which Andrew wrote about before. There is something very special about this place of hope in the midst of so much despair. We got in some more good soccer with the kids there that afternoon and the visit was a highlight for many of the participants.
3. A lecture on the geo-political history of Honduras by a rivetting professor of history from Tegucigalpa, Don Mario. He hosted us on his back porch and wowed us for a good hour and a half until we were thoroughly late for dinner.
4. Visiting rural coffee farms up in the mountains near Guatemala during the harvest. A Honduran organization called CASM (Mennonite Social Action Committee) is working with farmers to help them diversify their farms and use innovative technologies such as vermiculture (worm composting) and biodigesters in order to move towards sustainability and organic production. Very cool. We stayed in a little "eco-hotel" for 3 nights (they should call it an eco-cabin really), I hardly got any sleep, but it was worth it to get up into the fresh air and take a 5-hour horseback ride that skirted the Guatemalan border and made my rump sore for two days.
5. Nightly reflection, discussion, singing (in English!), and prayer with this group of thoughtful young people, all from different faith traditions and walks of life. We were challenged by our visits and speakers to consider our role as North Americans in the issues of globalization, corporate farming, free trade and cheap labor, and poverty. This has left me still feeling unsettled and questioning our own role here, but I suppose that is a good thing.
6. We got in some good game playing and I'm going to go ahead and take some credit for spreading the Dutch Blitz love further North, including "The Rock".
Some questions:
1. How can someone not like beans?
2. Why did I never learn Canadian geography as a child?
3. Can a two week, intensive cultural learning experience change life-long decisions and habits? Going along with our speaker Kurt ver Beek (we have a link to his website and work on long-term affects of short-terms missions under "related links") and assuming a big "No" to that question, how can we move towards meaningful and lasting change?
I have many more questions, which all add to my unsettled feelings these days. On a personal note, I'm also hoping to find a good place where I can volunteer my afternoons or mornings that fits in with our sporatic travel schedule. When we are busy we are really really busy, and when we're not, we're just not.
Semana Santa is around the corner! We're looking forward to hosting travelers from my home church in Portland, painting the office, and celebrating Easter and fellow MCCer Adam's birthday with an Easter Feaster extravaganza. Pictures of our travels with Canadians and Easter Feaster to come at a later date.
1. Playing soccer with the youth group from the Mennonite church in Tegucigalpa - kind of an embaressing show from us gringos, but fun - I've been wanting to play soccer since we got here.
2. A visit to AFE - Amor, Fe y Esperanza (love, faith, and hope) - this is the school started for children living in the dump which Andrew wrote about before. There is something very special about this place of hope in the midst of so much despair. We got in some more good soccer with the kids there that afternoon and the visit was a highlight for many of the participants.
3. A lecture on the geo-political history of Honduras by a rivetting professor of history from Tegucigalpa, Don Mario. He hosted us on his back porch and wowed us for a good hour and a half until we were thoroughly late for dinner.
4. Visiting rural coffee farms up in the mountains near Guatemala during the harvest. A Honduran organization called CASM (Mennonite Social Action Committee) is working with farmers to help them diversify their farms and use innovative technologies such as vermiculture (worm composting) and biodigesters in order to move towards sustainability and organic production. Very cool. We stayed in a little "eco-hotel" for 3 nights (they should call it an eco-cabin really), I hardly got any sleep, but it was worth it to get up into the fresh air and take a 5-hour horseback ride that skirted the Guatemalan border and made my rump sore for two days.
5. Nightly reflection, discussion, singing (in English!), and prayer with this group of thoughtful young people, all from different faith traditions and walks of life. We were challenged by our visits and speakers to consider our role as North Americans in the issues of globalization, corporate farming, free trade and cheap labor, and poverty. This has left me still feeling unsettled and questioning our own role here, but I suppose that is a good thing.
6. We got in some good game playing and I'm going to go ahead and take some credit for spreading the Dutch Blitz love further North, including "The Rock".
Some questions:
1. How can someone not like beans?
2. Why did I never learn Canadian geography as a child?
3. Can a two week, intensive cultural learning experience change life-long decisions and habits? Going along with our speaker Kurt ver Beek (we have a link to his website and work on long-term affects of short-terms missions under "related links") and assuming a big "No" to that question, how can we move towards meaningful and lasting change?
I have many more questions, which all add to my unsettled feelings these days. On a personal note, I'm also hoping to find a good place where I can volunteer my afternoons or mornings that fits in with our sporatic travel schedule. When we are busy we are really really busy, and when we're not, we're just not.
Semana Santa is around the corner! We're looking forward to hosting travelers from my home church in Portland, painting the office, and celebrating Easter and fellow MCCer Adam's birthday with an Easter Feaster extravaganza. Pictures of our travels with Canadians and Easter Feaster to come at a later date.
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