Perth - Gracias 2010/11: Canada World Youth Adventure VI

Cheque.

We have now been in Honduras for almost an entire month!  It seems like much longer in day to day time but much shorter overall. . .if that makes any sense?

Coffee drying in the sun

The days are still pretty nice, warm and the nights are a bit cool.  Apparently it gets "cold" in December, but we´ll see about that I guess.  It rains relatively frequently because we are in the mountains but not very hard or for very long.  Our diet still consists mainly of tortillas, beans, eggs, platanos, coffee a few vegetables and for lactose and meat eaters chicken or pork, cheese and mantiquilla which is like butter but with the texture of cream.  It´s great.  Other than potaste (chayote), that I seem to be given a lot for lunch as my "meat alternative", I love the food here.

Coffee plantation on the mountain

Inspecting a water system

Work has been interesting.  For the first couple of days Luz and I did mostly nothing but sit in the office and occasionally were asked to do some data entry for the employees. . .then we met another volunteer from the peace corps.  She's a civil engineer.  I immediately bombarded her with questions that I didn´t have the language capacity to ask in Spanish to my other colleagues.  Her job generally consists of designing, assessing, monitoring and planning water systems and the needs for them in the 5 municipalities the organization works with.  Many of the small communities within the municipalities don´t have access to running water and she is primarily working on helping that issue.  She has been working in Honduras for almost 2 years and has some very interesting insights about the organization and the work she is doing.  The ones that are most interesting to me are:

Iglesia in San Sebastian

1. During the military coup last year, many of the past employees lost their jobs and the current director, who was an employee before the coup, assumed the directorial position of the organization.  The peace corps volunteer questions the effectiveness/benevolence (?) of the new director and thinks that alot of his actions are politically motivated.  She is constantly worried about the real motives of her being sent to certain municipalities.  Ex.  If there is an election coming up in San Sebastian (one of the municipalities) and the director sends her out there, at the current mayor´s request, to design an irrigation system (when some communities still don´t have access to running water), her visit under that mayor´s request could help sway the vote.  She tries to be conscious of this and avoids situations where she feels she could have an influence.

2. She is concerned about the work she is doing that could be done by a Honduran national.

Street scene: Gracias, Lempira

These are examples of 2 big problems that I have often come across in my experience with development work.  Maybe not formed exactly like the first one, but politics and corruption are often huge obstacles (or helps if you are the "right people" or paying enough) to development work.   And, it always seems to make much more sense to me to have the nationals of a country working toward their own development as a nation. . .or at least provide training so that when foreign volunteers leave, a local will be able to fill her place.  It´s always much easier to say than do though for a myriad of reasons.

Celaque

This does not mean I hate my job.  Not at all.  Quite the opposite really.  For me, being given the opportunity to learn about these issues more intimately is perfect.  I´ve also been able to do some really cool and interesting things so far.  I went on a 6 hour hike in the mountans surrounding Gracias with the Peace Corps volunteer to inspect an existing water system and assess the problems and whether or not it needs and expansion.  That was possibly the best day of work I´ve ever had!  We had another day where we were brought to a warehouse full of donations (mostly swedow redirected from Haiti earthquake relief. . .proof that donations do not always get to where you expect them to go. . .which was one of the complaints I had to defend when fundraising for Red Cross back in 2006).  We had to sort the donations- shoes, diapers, underwear, coveralls, medical supplies etc.-into 5 equal parts to donate to the 5 municipalities.  But once they left the warehouse the distribution, assurance that they would be getting to people that actually needed them, was entirely out of our hands.

Interesting stuff.

Random Goat in the street :)

Sunset on Celaque

 As for the group, we are still doing pretty well overall.  We´ve had 3 birthday parties already, and 3 EADs where we learned more  about Honduran vs Canadian culture, Public health and agriculture and coffee production.  More running, yoga and an event for Stop Violence Against Women day. 

So. . .I think that brings us to the end of November!  I´m sure I will have lots more to update about next time!  Hope you are having a great time wherever you are!