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.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Photos, photos, photos
It's been a busy couple of months here in San Pedro. We are preparing for our first major learning tour, comprised of youth from the Canadian Food Grains Bank who will be spending two weeks studying food security issues in Honduras. We'll take them all over the country, from Tegucigalpa; to El Cajón near Lago Yojoa; to Azacualpa, Santa Barbara; and, finally, San Pedro Sula. We'll visit a clothing factory, the world's largest Tilapia exporter, farm projects in the mountains, a women's rights organization, the Canadian International Development Agency office, and much more. We'll also probably be incomunicado for a while.
Here are two photo albums of some highlights from the last month:
Click here for pictures of our good friends Joel Cano and Vanessa Flores at their wedding on the beach.
Here are some pictures of our first work and learn team, five folks from First Mennonite Church of Bluffton. We spent most of the week assisting with various building projects at the Mennonite Church in La Lopez Arellano, just north of San Pedro Sula.
Here are two photo albums of some highlights from the last month:
Click here for pictures of our good friends Joel Cano and Vanessa Flores at their wedding on the beach.
Here are some pictures of our first work and learn team, five folks from First Mennonite Church of Bluffton. We spent most of the week assisting with various building projects at the Mennonite Church in La Lopez Arellano, just north of San Pedro Sula.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Searching for food and dignity
In the mountains outside of Tegucigalpa there is a community that lives among the rats, cows, dogs, gang members, drug addicts, alcoholics, and glue sniffers in the municipal dump. Every day hundreds of trucks dump waste from all corners of the city, and children fight the buzzards for scraps of food, and each other for bits of metal or plastic to recycle for a few lempiras. The scene is almost unimaginable. A man approached us and opened his shirt to show how cancer had eaten away part of his chest; an 8-year-old girl in a camouflage hat was the dirtiest human being I have ever encountered; a young man with a few teeth hanging on giddily played for me the harmonica he just found in the piles of trash.
No human being should ever have to be subjected to this sort of undignified existence.
The hope in the midst of this chaos is a school called Amor, Fe, y Vida -- Love, Faith, and Life. For seven years, Jeony, a mild-mannered Methodist pastor with a huge heart and a head full of dreams, has developed a school for the children who live in and around the dump with hopes of sending them on to something better. The hope is that they will at least graduate from sixth grade, the mandatory level of schooling for Honduran youth. At least a few have graduated from high school and have gone on to technical schools. Jeony hopes many will go on to university and come back to help teach others who call the dump their home. Above all, however, they hope to teach the kids that they are loved by and are dignified through God
There is no way to sum up what we saw today in a few paragraphs. But swirling around in my mind is the haunting call to action Joeny left us with. He said that his years working at the dump have taught him that there is a difference between pity and compassion. Pity means you get back in your car, go home to your warm house and forget what you saw, or consider it a hopeless cause. Compassion means you ask every day, "What more can I do?" If nothing else, there is always prayer. He said that before he started with the people at the dump he didn't have anything to pray for after 15 minutes or so of devotions. Now he has over 1,000 reasons to pray -- all the people who call the dump their home.
Joeny's project is documented here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWn4zkND0mc
No human being should ever have to be subjected to this sort of undignified existence.
The hope in the midst of this chaos is a school called Amor, Fe, y Vida -- Love, Faith, and Life. For seven years, Jeony, a mild-mannered Methodist pastor with a huge heart and a head full of dreams, has developed a school for the children who live in and around the dump with hopes of sending them on to something better. The hope is that they will at least graduate from sixth grade, the mandatory level of schooling for Honduran youth. At least a few have graduated from high school and have gone on to technical schools. Jeony hopes many will go on to university and come back to help teach others who call the dump their home. Above all, however, they hope to teach the kids that they are loved by and are dignified through God
There is no way to sum up what we saw today in a few paragraphs. But swirling around in my mind is the haunting call to action Joeny left us with. He said that his years working at the dump have taught him that there is a difference between pity and compassion. Pity means you get back in your car, go home to your warm house and forget what you saw, or consider it a hopeless cause. Compassion means you ask every day, "What more can I do?" If nothing else, there is always prayer. He said that before he started with the people at the dump he didn't have anything to pray for after 15 minutes or so of devotions. Now he has over 1,000 reasons to pray -- all the people who call the dump their home.
Joeny's project is documented here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWn4zkND0mc
Friday, January 25, 2008
Help take a bite out of crime
In the last two weeks I have had two run-ins with the Honduran police, a jumpy bunch, if I do say so myself. First, early last week after dropping off a group from Bluffton, Ohio, at their hotel, I was pulled over less than half a block from our apartment after apparently stopping at an intersection where there was no stop sign. Guilty as charged, I'll admit, if that is a crime. Actually, it was more of a rolling stop in fear that the car speeding towards me on the cross street was not going to observe his stop sign. Anyway, four young motorcycle cops (one of them 20 -- I asked him, much to Amanda's chagrin) with machine guns stopped me and asked me in quiet, quick Spanish for my license, which I handed over. And my passport, which I did not have on me. Apparently this is a worthy crime in Honduras, and, as one of the cops reminded me, if a Honduran in the states was caught without a passport he would be deported immediately. So we waited in silence. And waited. Stared at the sky. Waited. After fifteen minutes, with a few failed attempts at small talk, they said the were going to forgive me this time. They let me drive the half a block to my house, watched as we pulled in to the gate, and sped off to catch other criminals.
Then two nights ago, after a nice dinner with the same group in the swankier part of town, I was caught heading the wrong way down a dark street that suddenly became one-way. A truckload of policemen was right there, as if waiting for a confused gringo. Another young cop took my license and asked me to exit the car to talk with his supervisor, who explained to me that he was going to write me a ticket, like they do in the states. I accepted my fate and asked to clarify exactly the process. According to the Honduran book of traffic laws, if a driver is caught violating a traffic law, the police officer is to withhold the driver's license, and the lawbreaker must go to the bank to pay the fine to reclaim his license. This police officer, however, told me that it would be easier to just pay the fine on the spot so I don't have to stand in line at the bank. I told him that I would prefer to pay at the bank, as that is the proper way. He used a different tack. "Well maybe you'd like to help us pay for the gas for this truck." Again, I told him I'd prefer the bank option. Somehow I maintained my composure, and actually spoke fairly decent Spanish, while the young cop on my right was carelessly swinging his machine gun back and forth. After looking at my license a little longer he told me he would forgive without a ticket. I thanked them, stepped back into the car, took a few deep breaths, and took off towards the hotel.
Obviously, in each situation the police officers were hoping for a bribe, affectionately called a mordida -- literally a bite. People here live in fear of the police. My luck has been due largely to the fact that I'm a gringo, and the police and I both know that this entails certain leverage. An average Honduran does not have the luxury of reporting abuse to the most powerful embassy in the world. What would it do to your psyche to know that reporting a crime is useless, because many of the police have been paid off by the criminals? Corruption at this level contributes to what I would call anarchy -- lawlessness, caused by the fact that there is no one to turn to. In these instances I have merely tasted the fear immigrants in the states feel towards the police, not to mention the anxiety that Hondurans feel on a daily basis.
Then two nights ago, after a nice dinner with the same group in the swankier part of town, I was caught heading the wrong way down a dark street that suddenly became one-way. A truckload of policemen was right there, as if waiting for a confused gringo. Another young cop took my license and asked me to exit the car to talk with his supervisor, who explained to me that he was going to write me a ticket, like they do in the states. I accepted my fate and asked to clarify exactly the process. According to the Honduran book of traffic laws, if a driver is caught violating a traffic law, the police officer is to withhold the driver's license, and the lawbreaker must go to the bank to pay the fine to reclaim his license. This police officer, however, told me that it would be easier to just pay the fine on the spot so I don't have to stand in line at the bank. I told him that I would prefer to pay at the bank, as that is the proper way. He used a different tack. "Well maybe you'd like to help us pay for the gas for this truck." Again, I told him I'd prefer the bank option. Somehow I maintained my composure, and actually spoke fairly decent Spanish, while the young cop on my right was carelessly swinging his machine gun back and forth. After looking at my license a little longer he told me he would forgive without a ticket. I thanked them, stepped back into the car, took a few deep breaths, and took off towards the hotel.
Obviously, in each situation the police officers were hoping for a bribe, affectionately called a mordida -- literally a bite. People here live in fear of the police. My luck has been due largely to the fact that I'm a gringo, and the police and I both know that this entails certain leverage. An average Honduran does not have the luxury of reporting abuse to the most powerful embassy in the world. What would it do to your psyche to know that reporting a crime is useless, because many of the police have been paid off by the criminals? Corruption at this level contributes to what I would call anarchy -- lawlessness, caused by the fact that there is no one to turn to. In these instances I have merely tasted the fear immigrants in the states feel towards the police, not to mention the anxiety that Hondurans feel on a daily basis.
Friday, January 18, 2008
"Ese no es espaguetis" (This is not spaghetti)
I thought this story would be worth sharing...
The other evening we walked home from the office after a long day of orienting, translating (mostly Andrew), and traveling around the city with a group of folks visiting from a church in Ohio. We were pretty tired, didn't have much food in the fridge and so had decided to just eat out for a change. It wasn't until we'd already reached the large blue wall topped with razor wire surrounding our apartment that we noticed the family sitting inside their truck parked out front, waving and smiling at us. It was our new friends, Román and Delmy and two of their four small kids, Aby and Román (junior - otherwise known as Románcito - possibly the cutest kid ever). They live about 30 minutes away and had been parked out front for over an hour waiting for us to get home. We felt pretty honored - so far friend-making and hanging out with Hondurans has been slow to happen, besides the casual meeting people that happens at church. It's hard to know how to get to know people better when the formal inviting people over for dinner or out to do something doesn't seem to happen as much in this culture. So we'd finally been "dropped-in" on and we were pretty excited.
We rushed to invite them up to our apartment and do all the right things - including running out to the nearest pulperia to buy sodas since all we usually have around is water. I thought it would freak them out if Andrew were to help me cook so I knew it was up to me - what to make? My choices were beans and rice or pasta. I chose pasta, since making beans and rice for Hondurans is just too intimidating - surely they would not be impressed with my gringafying of their native cuisine. So I whipped up the usual veggie marinara sauce that I usually make and some bow-tie pasta, the only kind we had around. In the process I made the dire mistake of telling the kids, who were watching me with great interest, that I was making spaghetti.
Finally I had it all together, served in a bowl, Honduran-style with toast stacked on a little plate. Plastic chairs were pulled in from outside, small children were put on cushions so their chins were at least even with our awkwardly-tall table, when I noticed Románcito was sitting there looking pretty devastated. He whispered to his dad "pero ¿dónde está la comida?" (but where is the food?)
His father kindly tried to explain that the strange looking geometrical blobs covered in red stuff mixed with distateful vegetables was actually made out of the same thing as his beloved noodles. And that the sauce was actually not that different from ketchup. I couldn't help laughing as the poor little guy wrinkled up his face, examined a few bow-ties up close and almost broke out in tears. Actually everyone got a pretty big kick out of it (excluding Románcito - who eventually did eat toast and cheese, but only after his sister assured him that it was, in fact, real cheese), and despite making a small child cry with my cooking I felt really good about the evening. In a small way it felt like we'd finally arrived. And it made a last impression - his parents later told us that the next morning at breakfast little Román said, "Amanda no me dió espaguetis..." (Amanda didn't give me spaghetti)
The other evening we walked home from the office after a long day of orienting, translating (mostly Andrew), and traveling around the city with a group of folks visiting from a church in Ohio. We were pretty tired, didn't have much food in the fridge and so had decided to just eat out for a change. It wasn't until we'd already reached the large blue wall topped with razor wire surrounding our apartment that we noticed the family sitting inside their truck parked out front, waving and smiling at us. It was our new friends, Román and Delmy and two of their four small kids, Aby and Román (junior - otherwise known as Románcito - possibly the cutest kid ever). They live about 30 minutes away and had been parked out front for over an hour waiting for us to get home. We felt pretty honored - so far friend-making and hanging out with Hondurans has been slow to happen, besides the casual meeting people that happens at church. It's hard to know how to get to know people better when the formal inviting people over for dinner or out to do something doesn't seem to happen as much in this culture. So we'd finally been "dropped-in" on and we were pretty excited.
We rushed to invite them up to our apartment and do all the right things - including running out to the nearest pulperia to buy sodas since all we usually have around is water. I thought it would freak them out if Andrew were to help me cook so I knew it was up to me - what to make? My choices were beans and rice or pasta. I chose pasta, since making beans and rice for Hondurans is just too intimidating - surely they would not be impressed with my gringafying of their native cuisine. So I whipped up the usual veggie marinara sauce that I usually make and some bow-tie pasta, the only kind we had around. In the process I made the dire mistake of telling the kids, who were watching me with great interest, that I was making spaghetti.
Finally I had it all together, served in a bowl, Honduran-style with toast stacked on a little plate. Plastic chairs were pulled in from outside, small children were put on cushions so their chins were at least even with our awkwardly-tall table, when I noticed Románcito was sitting there looking pretty devastated. He whispered to his dad "pero ¿dónde está la comida?" (but where is the food?)
His father kindly tried to explain that the strange looking geometrical blobs covered in red stuff mixed with distateful vegetables was actually made out of the same thing as his beloved noodles. And that the sauce was actually not that different from ketchup. I couldn't help laughing as the poor little guy wrinkled up his face, examined a few bow-ties up close and almost broke out in tears. Actually everyone got a pretty big kick out of it (excluding Románcito - who eventually did eat toast and cheese, but only after his sister assured him that it was, in fact, real cheese), and despite making a small child cry with my cooking I felt really good about the evening. In a small way it felt like we'd finally arrived. And it made a last impression - his parents later told us that the next morning at breakfast little Román said, "Amanda no me dió espaguetis..." (Amanda didn't give me spaghetti)
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