Copan Ruins

This past week, Cuso had its annual volunteer’s meeting in Copan. We set out on Wednesday morning, excited for the journey, 11 optimistic people in a bus. 13 hours later, when we still haven’t arrived, we are all silent, our behinds numb, wondering if we had entered some twilight zone and that we would be on the bus for eternity.  In actual fact, the distance between Tegucigalpa and Copan is only about 400 km, but the combination of an overly cautious driver, a few stops that included a tour of a colonial town and a huge lunch, plus the roads and traffic made the trip stretch on forever.  It was after 10pm before we checked into our hotel, exhausted but happy to have arrived. 

As soon as we arrived, a cold front hit, so the next day as we met in the hotel for our day long workshop, I wasn’t too disappointed to be stuck inside, as it was grey and cold outside.  In the afternoon, to break up the workshop, we visited a bird sanctuary tucked up in the hills above the town.  They rescue birds that were pets and have been abandoned, or have been injured and need rehabilitation.  Many of the birds were happy to greet us with a shrill “hola!”, which was endlessly thrilling.  We got a chance to hold some of the birds, 3 named Buffy, Missy and JLo. :)

The following morning we set out on a guided tour of the Copan ruins. The city at its peak had over 30 000 residents, and was ruled by kings thought to be gods by the common people.  Our tour guide informed us that magic mushrooms were used by the rich on a regular basis. The wealthy Mayans would paint their children’s noses with bright colours starting from a young age to distinguish them from the poor children, which resulted with the children going cross eyed from constantly seeing their own brightly coloured noses.  They would also modify the shape of their heads with boards, which created a kind of cone head, and purposely pushed their teeth out, so they could imbed the teeth with jade.  So, the most handsome Mayans were cross-eyed, buck-toothed, and cone-headed. 

There were 16 kings in the dynasty, who ruled over a period of 400 years.  All of those rulers died of old age, except for the last one, who was captured by a nearby city and beheaded.  This resulted in the people losing faith in their leaders, as it was obvious that they weren’t actually gods, and the city started to disintegrate soon after that. In their skeletal remains, it appears that there was a lack of resources, and overpopulation may have played a role in their demise.

In the afternoon, we went to some hot springs about an hour into the mountains above the town.  It was a paradise, with a series of pools running down the mountain side. I could have spent the entire day bathing there, and the cool temperatures were perfect for the activity.

The next day we all piled back into the bus for another long haul back to Tegucigalpa.  We made a quick stop at the PulhaPanzak (Mayan for white water) waterfalls, which were breathtaking, clear water falling over green moss covered rocks.

Back in the city, I am back at work at the NGO I work at, the Centre for Human Development (Centro de Desarrollo Humano).  The goal for my year of work here is to do all the initial research and investigation of the current labour market, in order to convince the municipal government to give us a space to start a Youth Employment Centre.  I will be holding a series of participative workshops in order to get the youth involved in the initial stages, with the hope that this will be a youth-run Centre.  Unemployment is extremely high in Tegucigalpa, and the highest numbers of unemployed are between the ages of 16-30.  There are few universities, and the costs of higher education keep many from continuing past ninth grade.  Many companies and businesses have a distrust of young people, as they tend to be the ones involved in gang activity, and are unwilling to give work contracts to people with little experience.  Some companies even require women to undergo a pregnancy test to prove they are not pregnant before they will hire them.

Hopefully, at the end of this year, we will be ready to open the doors to a Youth Employment Centre that will offer job search assistance, entrepreneurship support and links to vocational training.

So, here’s where you come in!  Cuso needs your help to fund this project!  I have raised around $700 of the $2000 I promised to raise when I signed up as a Cuso volunteer, and I’m hoping I can get to $1000 before the end of this fiscal year.  Any donations over $10 receive a tax receipt, and it will be matched 10 times by DFATD (now Global Affairs Canada), so your $10 donation actually equals $100 for Cuso!  Please go to the following link to make your donation, and I promise to keep you updated about my progress! 

https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/FundraisingPage.aspx?registrationID=3166565&langPref=en-CA&Referrer=http%3a%2f%2fwww.cusointernational.org%2fdonate%2fdonate#&panel1-1

When people ask me why I'm still single...

    So sometimes I wonder if there´s something wrong with me.  The majority of my friends and peers are marrying themselves off, having children, buying houses, settling down.  And here I am, about to turn 30 in a foreign country, single with no assets, with student loans and only earning a stipend.  Am I missing some crucial internal chip that everyone else has? My biological clock is definitely ticking, but my urge to continue traveling, to move on to the next challenge, the next adventure is greater than the call of my ovaries.  Sometimes the idea that I could just continue this vagrant lifestyle indefinitely appeals to me more than making money, paying off debts, or meeting ¨the man of my dreams¨.  I know I´m not alone, that many people feel this way, especially the other travelers I've met along the way. But now with many of them that I thought were kindred spirits a few years ago showing off their engagement rings on Facebook, or going back to their country of origin, I´m left feeling…well, left out.

On Sunday mornings, however, when I wake up and the possibilities are endless with no one to answer to, no children to make breakfast for and I´ve got new places to see and people to meet, I feel downright smug. That doesn´t mean I won´t go to bed that night feeling alone in my queen bed, hugging a pillow just so I’ll have something to squeeze. In all my travels, this is the constant paradox – I´m never more alive, and yet I´m never more alone than when I arrive in a new country.  Maybe loneliness is what it means for me to be alive these days; the bittersweet triumph of spending an entire day without speaking to another human being who knows my name.

The freedom of starting again in a new country allows me to constantly reinvent myself.  In my blank state form, I am nonjudgmental, open-minded, and eager to learn.  I have made some of my best friendships while abroad, being able to connect on a deeper level. After doing away with small talk – where are you from, how long will you be here, conversation quickly changes to what makes us tick, what drives us, the good, the bad and the ugly, all the icky gicky stuff that normally isn´t spoken of.  As an extroverted introvert, these are the conversations that make me feel connected and keep me coming back for more.

I have a dream of being settled one day and possibly starting a family, but for now, that is all it is; a dream. For all my friends and family who are now used to me never being around: thank you for understanding me and loving me whether I am near or far.

A day in the life

 If I leave my windows open at night, there is a breeze that comes off of the highest hill in the city, which is nice, but it also means my neighbour’s rooster is going to wake me up at 3am.  These city roosters don’t have a good concept of time, it seems. Luckily, my windows have screens, which keep those pesky zika/dengue/chikungunya-carrying mosquitos away.  (The past week has been really cold however, it actually snowed in Honduras!!!!)

I walk to work in the mornings, about 15 minutes away from my apartment up a slight hill.  I have to cross the street before I get to the American Embassy however, because if  I don´t I have to squeeze through the crowd of people waiting outside in hopes of getting a visa.  People wait for hours each day, and have to pay upwards of $200 US for an interview in the Embassy, regardless of whether their visa gets approved or not.

There is an art to walking in Tegucigalpa as a single woman.  I have to be aware of my surroundings, but at the same time, must avoid eye contact with any men I cross paths with.  If I accidently lock eyes, I guess it means I’m inviting them to start wooing me.  It´s common for men to shout ‘piropos’ at women here, anything from ‘you’re beautiful’ to ‘I love you, let’s get married’ to a lot more vulgar things.  Sometimes what they say catches me off guard, and again, it’s imperative that I don’t react, because if they see a reaction, it’s an encouragement for more.  Welcome to Machismo 101.

In the office where I work, save for 2 men, we are women, mostly over 50.  Because of that, certain things happen differently.  The gallon of drinking water, for example, when it gets delivered full, stays on the floor until it is about half way gone, and it can be lifted easily to the counter.  No one thinks it is strange to have to squat down to tip over the gallon bottle carefully and fill one’s water bottle.  This being an NGO, there isn´t a lot of extra money for repairs.  The doorbell hasn’t worked properly in ages, and instead of getting it fixed, the doors are left open during most of the day. Most of the computers are battling against a load of unused programs and viruses, but there is no one in charge of IT or computer maintenance, so people get used to chatting while they wait for their computers to load, or to open a program.

Lunch time is a shared affair, with people portioning out parts of their lunches, warming tortillas on the hot plate, pouring coca cola, and gossiping. The topics range from whose father/mother/relative is ill, who died recently, the water shortages, the weather, zika virus, and finding out more about the Canadian volunteer (am I single, do I want children, do I like to cook etc).

Coffee is made twice a day, in the morning and after lunch, strong dark Honduran coffee that tastes more like espresso – it’s made on the stove top with a cloth coffee filter. Often, in the afternoon people come in off the street selling sweet breads or dulce de leche candies – a nice snack to have with coffee (they have good timing, like they can smell the coffee from outside).

I have a desk and a computer in a shared office space with two other women – plus I am right next to a window – a first for me! No more cave offices for me! After work I generally walk to the gym that is in a shopping center about 5 minutes away.  Then I carpool back home in a taxi with some of the other Cuso volunteers that go to the same gym. 

It gets dark around 6:30pm here all year long, and after 7pm, the only people walking the streets seem to be prostitutes.  The police don’t even walk; they drive around in pick ups with their lights flashing continuously.  People who have grown up here don´t even think about walking at night; it simply isn´t done.

For the most part, life is starting to take on some routine – I’ve started giving English classes on Tuesdays, I go to the gym around 3 times a week, I’m starting guitar classes,  and shopping and laundry gets done on the weekends.  At times, I almost forget I’m in a country that in fact I have yet to see.  I truly only know a portion of the city in which I live, and nothing of the rest of the country. 

At the end of this month, I will be going to the Copan Ruins, and I´m looking forward to seeing   what´s outside the boundaries of Tegucigalpa!

Human Rights? What are those?

This entry is a depressing one.  Normally, I wouldn’t focus on the negative, but I feel like I need to try to convey the breadth of issues that Honduras is facing, and the reason I feel like I need to be here to try to be part of a positive change.  I hope that in the entries to come, I have more positive news to share.

Honduras has been a country plagued with violence, corruption, and impunity.  Unfortunately, these tendencies seem to have infiltrated all aspects of life here, and there aren’t many signs that it’s getting any better (Although Honduras is not the murder capital of the world anymore, hurray!)

On January 25, the Leader of the LGBT Human Rights group, Paola Barraza, was shot and killed in her home.  When the article went to press on 27th, the police hadn’t even assigned an investigator to the case. Unfortunately, this is not out of the norm.  Only 2% of crimes actually go to trial in this country. In 2014 more human rights defenders were killed in Honduras than anywhere else in the world, and the murder rate of women is so high it even has it’s own name for statistical purposes: femicide.

Despite the fact that 98% of crimes go unpunished, prisons here are grossly overpopulated. There are over 16 000  people in prisons whose maximum capacity is 8625. The incarcerated only receive $1.38 a day for meals, leaving it up to family members to provide and transport meals to the inmates, who sometimes wait years just for sentencing.  Of the entire prison population, only 6670 have received a firm sentence.

As a Canadian in Honduras, the first impression I got was that there are a lot of guns.  Everywhere.  It seems like everyone and their mother has at least one gun, and all security guards have shotguns. The United States is a key player in the rise of arms, and therefor armed conflict in Central America.  Under the guise of training military groups in Central America, the US has shipped 1000’s of troops into the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras), to help fight the war on drugs.  Unfortunately, the strengthening of financial support for military force in turn strengthens the institutions that repress its population, as there are multiple cases of military terrorizing, wounding, and even killing innocent citizens.

The instability in Honduras has made people rich; private security companies pulled in $200 million US in capital in 2015.  Unfortunately, the rise of private security companies means more laymen are being trained to use guns, and the number of guns and ease of obtaining one has been on  the rise, leading to an increase in intra-familiar shootings and armed robberies.

Recently, in Guatemala, an International Commission against corruption was successful in ousting corruption at the highest level, resulting in the arrest of both the vice-president and president,  leading to new democratic elections.  Here in Honduras, after the discovery of a $200 million dollar fraud scheme in the IHSS, the country’s social security program, the people demanded an International Commission as well.  This resulted in weeks of protests, called the Antorchas, which unfortunately only resulted in the creation of the Missions to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), basically a band aid solution, and agreement between Honduran President Hernandez and the Organization of American States (OAS) to make recommendations for reform.  This only fuelled the fire of the protesters, as it comes nowhere close to being the international commission that they asked for. So, the marches continue, relatively peacefully, every Friday at 5pm (protesting without a permit is criminalized and has led to the deaths and arrests of many Hondurans).

There are too many examples of crimes against humanity to list.  Adding to the problem of insecurity is that literacy and education rates are extremely low, exacerbating the problem of unemployment, knowledge of basic rights, and sovereignty.  Only 60% of children finish 6th grade.  Of those who continue on, only 40% of them finish high school, and of those, 12% continue on to university, with only 4% of them graduating from University.

Over half the population  of this country live in conditions of extreme poverty, with little to no access to proper health care, job security, pensions or even potable water. Ironically, 5 of the billionaires from Forbes list of richest people in the world live here as well.  The gap between rich and poor is staggering.  It’s almost like there are two worlds within one country.   A person with money will be able to send their children to private school, and Universities in the United States.  They will have excellent health care and family ties that will ensure them they will never find themselves without a job or a roof over their head.  The rest of the population staggers under a huge unemployment rate, with most jobs available to rural people being informal, earning well below the minimum wage of around $250 per month.

I feel very fortunate to have been born in Canada.  To have grown up believing I have the same rights as men, to have had access to adequate health care, to trust that the police are there to uphold the law, not abuse it, and to be able to earn enough money to live comfortably, to travel, and to have fun.  That’s pretty rare here. For that reason, I feel compelled more than ever to try to make some positive change here, however small.  My goal while working with the Centro de Desarollo Humano for the next year is to assist in creating and opening a Youth Employment Centre, to assist youth in vocational training, job searching, and business planning.  I will be updating about my progress over the next year, and hopefully will have more good news than bad in the entries to come!