The Honduran Dilema: Constant exposure to what you can´t have

 “What do you need to be happy?” asked Miriam, our Spanish teacher. I replied that I need three things: my basic material needs, freedom, and the ability to help others. When you practice Spanish four hours a day for nine days, there is plenty of time for philosophical questions. This question, however, has some very real repercussions in Honduras. 

Miriam said many people in the world are unhappy because their material desires have grown beyond what their circumstances support. With the expansion of communication, people in developing countries are constantly exposed to advertising and media from the United States. The ads here bombard rich and poor Hondurans alike with a lifestyle that only the rich can afford.

For a culture where many things are lacking, including clean water, Hondurans have a surprising amount of modern gadgets. Nearly every adult under the age of forty has a cell phone. The house where I stayed in Santa Lucia had 100 channels of cable, which came at a price of $20 per month. From what I’ve seen, having 100 channels is not an uncommon luxury here. Miriam said many Hondurans are in constant competition with one another to obtain the next possession on the ladder to material wealth.

An increasing number of Hondurans are unable to find happiness in Honduras. Thousands leave every year, legally and illegally, for the United States. Families are often broken apart when a parent leaves to find work and opportunity in the United States. These parents leave with the pretense of returning, but Miriam said many don’t.

Unhappiness due to material desire is an old problem, but globalization has taken it to a new level. Cultures that were more isolated decades ago are now well aware that the grass looks greener on the other side.

Globalization is here to stay, but the world needs to find a way to deal with some of its side effects. Corporations can’t be blamed for advertising their products to anyone willing to listen. There is no going back to a world where a person struggling to get by in Honduras is not exposed to life United States.

The only solution I see is to improve conditions in Honduras and to develop a greater sense of cultural pride among Hondurans. A poor Honduran needs to be able to say to herself, “Yes, I don’t have a car, and I don’t have big screen TV, but here in Honduras, we have other things that are just as good.”

Life in Honduras has plenty of advantages. Honduras is a country full of natural beauty. Most people here lead less stressful lives than we do in the United States. Despite the alarming number of single mothers here, family ties are still strong. It is taken for granted that Grandmothers and aunts take care of little children and that these children will one day take care of their aging parents.

Hondurans already have some of this pride. Nearly everyone I’ve discussed food with has told me how healthy and filling the Honduran plato tipico (typical meal) of beans, tortillas and cheese is.

Irma, my host mother in Santa Lucia, told me proudly that she’d rather stay in Honduras than move to the U.S. She spent a year in the United States a decade ago and didn’t enjoy life there at all. She said she was offered permanent residency but declined. “I don’t want to stay,” she told the immigration officer. “I don’t even like living in your country.”

Every Honduran can’t come to the United States. Even if conditions do improve here, it will be a long time before the average Honduran can lead the life they see on TV. It will be an especially long time if all the Hondurans who can leave the country.

For conditions to improve here, the Honduran dream can’t be to skip the country and live the American dream. The dream should be to stay here and improve a country that already has much to be proud of.

Finally in Ojojona

Greetings from Ojojona. Our Spanish classes finished up on Friday and we met with Monroe before he started his trip back home. When we said goodbye to Monroe in the office, it finally sunk in that we’re here to stay and we’re on our own. Monroe told us that in addition to our work with the Ojojona plant we will begin a preliminary design for a potential new plant in the town of Moroceli.

Carol and I are both living with families in Ojojona. I’m staying with a middle-aged woman named Esperanza and her two sons who are about my age. Her sons work six or seven long days a week in Tegucigalpa, so I haven’t had much time to meet them, but they are very friendly. Esperanza has an extra two-room house out back for me, which should be perfect. I have my own bathroom and living area, but eat three meals a day with her and whatever other family happens to be around.

We got right down to work Saturday, the first day we were here. Antonio, the APP technician we will work closely with, came in the morning to check the plant with us. When it’s working the plant treats water well, and when we come we are able to get it working. So far the problem is that when we leave the plant it sometimes stops working, mainly because of problems with the chemical dosing. We still have plenty of small problems to fix, but it’s encouraging to know that the plant is capable of treating water.

Installation of tank covers on the treatment plant in Ojojona. (L to R: Me, Lester, Gabriel, Lester’s Brother, Carol). Lester made the covers and his brother and Gabriel came to help install them.

The Particulars

I will be in Honduras from August 6, 2007 to August 7, 2008. I´m here working on a water treatment plant project called Aguaclara. The project is a joint venture between Cornell University and Agua para el Pueblo (APP), a Honduran NGO (non-governmental organization). Carol Serna, who just graduated from Cornell with her masters, is also here working on the project.

We will spend the first couple months in a town called Ojojona about 40 minutes outside Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. Aguaclara already completed construction of a water treatment plant in Ojojona, but the plant is still not working reliably. The treatment plants we are working with are a new design from Cornell, so there will be plenty of trial and error. Our task in Ojojona will be twofold:

1. Help the plant operators to get the plant working well. If this requires modifications, we will help with the design of those modifications.
2. Give the plant operators sufficient training so that when we leave they know how the plant functions well enough to operate and maintain it.

If things go well in Ojojona and we (the team from Cornell and APP) aggree that the technology is effective, we hope to begin construction of another plant in a different town within the year. APP has considered several locations, but the town or Moroceli is the most likely.

One purpose of this blog will be to let people know what I´m up to. But since you might get sick of hearing what I had for breakfast and where I went over the weekend, I also want to write about some of the issues Honduras faces. I hope we get the opportunity to talk to a variety of Hondurans and learn about their opinions, problems and dreams regarding everything from politics to family life. So far most of the Hondurans we´ve met have been ready and willing to speak about nearly everything. Hopefully, this trend continues and my Spanish improves so I can speak and listen in a more inteligent manner.

To improve our Spanish, Carol and I are in the town of Santa Lucia for two weeks taking some pretty intensive Spanish classes. We have four hours of language instruction in the morning and two and a half hours of practical experience and fieldtrips in the afternoon. The program was billed as eight hours a day, but since the schedule calls for only 6.5 hours, and we often start a bit late and end early, it´s been about 5.5 hours a day so far. I haven´t spent this much time in a classroom since high school, so 5.5 hours is fine with me.

Santa Lucia, a bedroom community of about 7,000 a half hour from Teguc, is the training grounds for all of the Peace Corps volunteers that come to Honduras. That means people here are pretty used to gringos walking around. It´s a nice place to test the water (metaphorically; we won´t start actually testing the water in Ojojona for a couple weeks) and get aquainted with Honduras.

My Family in Santa Lucia (L to R: Ana, Fernando, Me, Irma)

The View from Irma’s House

Our Spanish School