The Week after the Coup

Last week, Honduras was very prominent in the world news. Sunday, June 28 President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales was forcibly removed from the country by military forces backed by the National Congress and the Supreme Court. The same day, Roberto Micheletti, president of the National Congress, assumed the office of President of the Republic.

Living in the middle of this political mess, and faced with drastically varying opinions of the situation, it has been difficult for me to collect my thoughts. I don’t consider myself qualified to give an objective or well-informed opinion of the situation. However, I can tell what it has been like for me to live and work in Tegucigalpa this week, relate some of the information, rumors and opinions that I have heard over the week, and of course give some of my own speculations.

Who is Mel?

(image from Latin American Herald Tribune) 

Mel was born in Catacamas, Olancho in 1952 to a family of cattle ranchers and lumber producers. He began to study civil engineering but did not finish, dedicating himself to agriculture and ranching on his family land. Later he was president of the Honduran wood industry association and a member of the Honduran Council of Private Industry (Cohep). He also worked as the manager of a bank and other businesses. In public service, Mel was the director of the Honduran Social Investment Fund (FHIS), a government agency that executes public infrastructure projects, from 1998 to 2002, during which time the country was hit by Hurricane Mitch. Under Mel, FHIS realized many important public works projects, allowing communities to set their own infrastructure priorities.

Mel, who is a fan of horses and is usually found wearing a large cowboy had and cowboy boots, presents himself as a man of the people and an opponent of the traditional power groups in Honduras.

(Information from El Heraldo, June 29, “Manuel Zelaya, el depuesto presidente de Honduras”)

La Cuarta Urna

For some months, Mel had been promoting “La Cuarta Urna (The Fourth Ballot Box)”. La Cuarta Urna would be an extra ballot box in the November elections. In addition to casting their votes for mayor, congressional representative and president, Honduran voters would have the option to vote in favor of calling an assembly to modify the Honduran constitution. Mel called first for a national survey, Sunday, June 28, where he would see if there was enough support among the population for the Cuarta Urna in November. If the people answered “yes” on June 28, he would proceed with plans to include a Cuarta Urna in the November elections.

Mel sold La Cuarta Urna as a chance to give power to the people and to change the constitution to benefit the poor rather than the rich. However, most people agree that he also wanted to change the constitution to allow for re-election of the president, a change that would give him the opportunity to be president for another term. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador have used similar constitutional assemblies to remain in power for longer than their initial terms. During his presidency, Mel has become increasingly friendly toward and allied with Chavez, and his block of left-leaning Latin American countries.

I did not understand how Mel could have rushed through the constitutional reform process in time to allow for his own reelection in November, considering that the Cuarta Urna vote itself was not supposed to take place until the November election, but many seem to think that that was his objective. Perhaps he would have moved the Cuarta Urna vote up a few months to allow time for a constitutional assembly before the November elections. Some suggest that he would have used the results of the June 28 consultation as justification to begin a constitutional assembly immediately. El Heraldo, a Tegucigalpa newspaper that is sympathetic to those who overthrew Mel, claimed June 29, under the headline “Zelaya planificaba dissolver el Congreso (Zelaya was planning to dissolve the Congress)”, that congressional representatives had become aware that Mel intended to dissolve Congress at noon on the 28^th after seeing the initial results of the popular consultation.

Until several months ago I would have said Mel was a very unpopular president. In fact, in this blog I said that I had never heard one good thing about him. Several months ago my perspective began to change. In January of this year Mel significantly raised the minimum wage from 3400 Lempiras a month to 4055 Lempiras in rural areas and 5500 Lempiras in urban areas. While some say this increase improved conditions for working Hondurans, other people claim that it caused small businesses to lay off employees that they could no longer afford to employ. Nevertheless, nearly everyone agrees that Hondurans don’t earn enough, and many people took Mel’s rise in the wage as a sign that he is concerned about the welfare of the average Honduran.

In the last several months, some of my co-workers started to talk about Mel in a more positive light. A friend of mine studying psychology at the national university and her family turned out to be ardent supporters of Mel. She said that many students at the university were in favor of him. Dan, the Fullbright scholar working on the AguaClara project, said that the family he eats with was in favor of Mel and the Cuarta. Many people I have asked say that, if nothing else, Mel is trying to promote change in a country where change is needed.

In this environment of what I judged to be improved public support, Mel began to promote the Cuarta Urna.

“Yo hago una propuesta a la sociedad, démosle ese poder al pueblo en las consultas populares y que de aquí en adelante en Honduras, el promotor del cambio y del desarrollo, el que tenga palabra fresca para decidir que el país va bien o esta mal, es el pueblo, en él confío, en él deposito mi amor y mi confianza como Hondureño” (I make a proposal to society, let us give the people that power in the popular consultations and from here forward in Honduras, the promoter of change and of development, that has a fresh word to decide that the country is on a good path or that the country is on a bad path, is the people, in them I confide, in them I deposit my love and my confidence as a Honduran.” claimed Mel. (Poder Ciudadano May 18, 2009)

I have nothing against improving the constitution, but thought this was a very suspicious time to do it. As much as Mel denied that his crusade was about gaining another term, the history of Chavez in Venezuela and Correa in Ecuador, both allies of Mel, extending their terms through similar methods made me suspicious. Many supporters of Mel said that if he was trying to get himself another term, it was just fine with them. He was better than the rest of the country’s corrupt politicians, he had the well-being of the poor at heart, and four years were very short to make any real change in the country, they said. After all, in the United States presidents are allowed to serve two terms.

I am also not categorically against the reelection of presidents. We do it in the United States, and it seems to work fine. However, I am suspicious of a sitting president who wants to change the rules in the last months of his term. I also think that the political realities of Honduras might make reelection a bad idea. As the current president, Mel had vast resources to invest in propaganda to serve his own ends. Under the catchphrase “Poder Ciudadano (Citizen Power)” Mel used television commercials and a small free newspaper the government handed out every month or so to tell his constituents what a great job he was doing.

The morning after the earthquake a month ago I turned on the radio hoping to hear about what had happened. I found that the all the radio stations were “en cadena nacional (in national chain)”. In something similar to the Emergency Broadcast System in the United States, when the Honduran government has important news to report, it can obligate all radio and television stations to broadcast its message. I was not surprised that the radio stations were en cadena after such a significant disaster. I was surprised to hear one of Mel’s ministers talking not about the earthquake but about what a great job his administration had been doing at reducing poverty.

Mel was using all means available to promote the Cuarta Urna. The Poder Ciudadano newspapers praised the Urna as an opportunity for all Hondurans to be heard and encouraged everyone to come out and vote. Pamphlets were handed out in the street that used cartoons to explain why the Cuarta Urna was a step forward for democracy in Honduras. A coworker of mine said promoters of the Cuarta Urna had offered his son a job promoting it. His son would be paid $80 every two weeks to interview people in their neighborhood regarding the Cuarta Urna. I asked the co-worker whether he was in favor of the Cuarta. He told me that he was categorically against it. Then I asked him whether his son would accept the job. “Yes,” he told me, “He needs that money!”

Political support can often be won at an economic price. From what I have seen, a sitting president in Honduras has plenty of public resources at his disposal to pay that price. That is an unfair advantage for an incumbent seeking reelection.

When people told me that Mel was better than any of the other options and that for that reason four years of Mel might not be so bad, I couldn’t refute their claims. But, I don’t think it makes sense to do a last-minute overhaul on the constitution of a country just so you can reelect a sitting president because he happens to be less corrupt than the candidates to fill his spot.

I also wasn’t sure that Mel’s record was too encouraging. The first year I was here I heard nothing good about him, so I was wondering what had changed this year aside from the raise in the minimum wage. The national government has been working without a budget since the beginning of the year. That means that government agencies like SANAA, the national water authority that could be giving us support in evaluating the AguaClara treatment plants, have not been able to start new projects this year.

Municipal governments are still waiting for Poverty Reduction Strategy funds the national government gives them as part of the agreement that pardoned much of Honduras’ national debt. Since the Poverty Reduction Strategy budgets have not been approved yet, a couple of the treatment plants we want to build are on hold while the mayors wait for funds. One government program that did appear to be fully funded under Mel was the campaign to promote the Cuarta Urna.

The Run-up to the Cuarta

The first step to implementing the Cuarta Urna was a consultation of public opinion that was to take place Sunday, June 28. If a certain number of Hondurans turned out in support of the Cuarta, it would become a part of the next election.

In the week running up to the June 28 consultation, it was clear that majority of the ruling political elite was not supportive of Mel’s Cuarta. Liberals (Mel’s party) and Nationalists alike were speaking out against it and calling it unconstitutional. Elections are supposed to be under the charge of the Tribunal Superior de Elecciones (TSE), a non-partisan agency that oversees elections. The consultation was not approved by the TSE and was to be carried out directly by Mel, raising doubts regarding its validity. Most people I talked to seemed to think that regardless of how many people actually turned out to vote “yes” on June 28, Mel would produce enough votes for the measure to pass with flying colors. One co-worker of mine, who was actually pretty supportive of Mel, suggested that Mel would also fabricate some no votes if necessary to make the results look more realistic.

The Honduran military normally provides logistical support for elections under the guidance of the TSE. When Mel called for the military’s support in the June 28 consultation, General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, the jefe del Estado Mayor Conjunto (like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) of the armed forces, denied support based on the fact that the consultation was unconstitutional. In response, on Wednesday evening June 24, Mel fired General Vásquez Velásquez. In solidarity, the secretary of defense and the leaders of each branch of the military resigned. The Supreme Court quickly ruled that the firing of the General was illegal and restored him to his position.

Mel decided to carry out the consultation without the help of the military. Thursday morning June 25, he led a group of people from the presidential palace to an air force base in Tegucigalpa in order to retrieve materials for the June 28 consultation that were being held there under orders from the TSE. After this display of unrest, many establishments in Tegucigalpa, including Agua para el Pueblo, closed early Thursday afternoon.

Although the Cuarta Urna was still on everyone’s mind, life continued more or less normally Friday and Saturday. Friday we worked all day in the office and went out for dinner with Carol, a former AguaClara co-worker who was visiting from the states. Saturday I spent the day in Ojojona with Carol and returned to Tegucigalpa just after dark. Saturday night I went out to a karoke bar in downtown Tegucigalpa with some neighbors. The bar was packed and life appeared to be normal on the eve of Mel’s famous consultation. I returned late to my apartment in the Guadalupe and hit the sack.

Sunday, June 28

About 7:30 am I was awaken by a phone call from my co-worker Antonio. He said there had been a coup and that Mel had been captured and taken out of the country. He recommended that I stay put in the house because things could get messy later on in the day. I had made plans to see Carol before she flew back to the States at 2 pm, but with the uncertain political situation I decided it would be better for me to stay home. The electricity had been turned off throughout the country, so I could not get any information on my radio. I would later learn that telephone service had been cut throughout the morning and that multiple TV channels sympathetic to Mel had been militarized and taken off the air. I was tired and had nothing to do but wait, so I went back to sleep.

About an hour later I was disturbed by the sound of airplanes overhead. Two military jets were circling the sky above Tegucigalpa and a military helicopter was flying low back and forth over the city. I assumed these were Honduran planes using a show of force to maintain order, but couldn’t help but wonder if they might be Venezuelan planes sent to retaliate against those who had instigated the coup. It turned out they were Honduran planes.

By 11 am power had returned and I was able to turn on my radio. The Poder Judicial (the judicial branch of the government) was en cadena announcing that the military had removed the president from the country in response to a judicial order. Later the TSE came on the radio en cadena to assure Hondurans that normal elections would be held November 29, 2009, thus assuring that the coup was not an attempt to grab power indefinitely.

According to El Heraldo (with some of my added commentary), the operation to depose Mel took place as follows:

5:00 am: 200 soldiers arrive at Mel’s house to capture him. Mel’s guards offer little resistance.

5:25 am: Mel has been captured at gunpoint. Neighbors claim that some shots were fired.

5:50 am: Mel is taken to the Hernán Acosta Mejia air force base in Tegucigalpa and put on an airplane bound for San Jose, Costa Rica

7:25 am: Mel lands in Costa Rica.

10:59 am: The Poder Judicial goes on cadena nacional to validate the actions of the armed forces.

12:25 pm: The results of an investigation of Mel’s actions are read in congress. It is concluded that Mel violated the constitution with his actions.

12:33 pm: A letter of resignation supposedly signed by Mel is read in congress. Mel denies having signed this letter and it seems almost surely to have been fabricated.

1:45 pm: Following the constitutional line of succession, Roberto Micheletti, the president of the National Congress, a career politician and a member of the same Liberal party as Mel, is named as president for the remaining 6 months of Mel’s term.

These last three acts of Congress where broadcast en cadena on the radio and television.

At noon the streets were quiet and I was hungry. I first went to eat breakfast where I normally eat dinner a couple blocks away. Afterward, I ventured downtown, several blocks away, to see what was going on. The streets were even quieter than on a normal Sunday morning, but a few people were still out and things seemed pretty normal. In the central park there was the usual crowd of people mingling. I walked up to a group of middle-aged men standing in a circle discussing the situation. The group of about 20 included a few well-dressed men, a man without shoes who had probably spent the night on the street, and everything in between.

Most of those talking seemed to think that this coup was not a good thing. One particularly vocal man said that it reminded him of a coup decades ago, when dead bodies were a part of the equation. He feared Honduras was returning to the same troubled times. Another man suggested that the coup would result in devaluation of the Lempira and economic problems for Honduras. I was very interested in hearing the opinions of these central park regulars, but at the same time felt a bit out of place. They were there debating about the future of their country, and I was just a gringo gawking from the outside.

After I had been there about 10 minutes a not-so-well-dressed man, who may very well have been half drunk, showed up and stood next to me “Hi, how you doing?” he said in English. I’m all for Hondurans practicing their English, but, statistically speaking, I’ve learned that when a Honduras man randomly walks up to me on the street and starts speaking English, the result is rarely an agreeable conversation. “Are you from the United States?” he asked me. I responded that I was. “FBI?” he suggested, “because if you’re from the FBI we don’t want you here. Viva [Hugo] Chavez! Viva Mel!” I informed him that I was certainly not from the FBI and that I was here in Honduras doing water projects. He didn’t say anything more but did not seem too impressed. I decided it would be better to be on my way. I am confident that nearly everyone there would have been accepting of my presence, but it only takes one whacko to make a situation uncomfortable.

I headed over to the National Congress building, where the congress must have been preparing to install Michiletti as president. The building was surrounded by military riot police and there was a group of about 100 people outside. The situation was actually quite calm. I decided to walk home. As I passed the central park I saw the same man who had hassled me minutes before yelling his support for Mel.

I talked to few Hondurans about the coup on Sunday. One friend thought that Mel had deserved to be removed from power. A neighbor of mine, not a fan of Mel either, was hardly alarmed. He said the event had not really been a coup, and that the international community was overreacting. He doubted there would be significant civil unrest. The Honduran people aren’t much for protests he told me. Rather, they are “buenos aguantadores (good at putting up with things)”.

A co-worker, the same one who had suggested Mel might make up “no” votes as well as “yes” votes, called to tell me that the office would open late tomorrow if it opened at all. He was more alarmed and frustrated than the other two people I talked to. He said that the day’s events were a sign of just how corrupt Honduras really is. He was considering participating in the protests the following day.

As I watched the National Congress, the Supreme Court, the TSE and the business community rally behind the coup and the new president, I wondered where Mel’s supporters were. Had they been silenced? Were there fewer of them than I thought there had been? Were they all jumping ship now that Mel was not here to bribe them for their support? I heard more concern and disapproval coming from the international media than from inside Honduras. CNN was calling the action a coup and had a lot of coverage of the situation, until they were temporarily taken off the air in Honduras.

As I prepared to go to bed, I scanned the Tegucigalpa radio stations. The president of Honduras had been overthrown 15 hours ago, and in the capital city I could only find music and sports on the radio, not a bit of information on the day’s events. Aside from the international reaction, I only knew the opinions of the few Hondurans I had spoken with that day, and the official sterilized version given by the government cadenas. Mel’s supporters might still have been out there, but I wasn’t hearing them.

I looked outside from my balcony before going to sleep. The streets were quiet. The government had imposed a 9pm to 6am curfew.

Monday, June 29

On Monday morning things appeared to be returning to normal. People were out in the streets and going to work. I wondered why we had closed at APP when the rest of the world was working again.

I went down the street to Ruth’s house where I used to live to drop of my laundry. The woman who washes Ruth’s clothes still washes mine. On the way I ran into a friend who usually has an opinion regarding political situations. He said a coup was never something one hoped for, but that in this case it had been necessary. He was convinced that Mel had had intensions to use the same methods that Chavez and others had used in other parts of Latin America to take control of the country. He had heard that Mel was planning to change a few words in the question posed in Sunday’s popular consultation in order to justify calling a constitutional assembly very quickly. Mel’s plans had failed, he said, because Honduras was not leftist by nature. Honduras, for better or for worse, had always been aligned with the United States and followed a conservative path. Support of Mel likely had not been very genuine, he said, and would now dissolve. If the Organization of American States (OAS) didn’t like what was going on, they very well might suspend Honduras from the organization. But that would only last until the new elections in 6 months, he said, and then Honduras would be back.

After dropping off my laundry, I headed to the internet café to look for some international news. I learned that the entire international community was condemning the coup. The OAS, the UN, Honduras’ neighbors in Central America, Hugo Chavez, and Barak Obama all were calling for Mel’s return to the presidency. Almost all of the small smattering of Hondurans I had spoken with considered the coup a done deal, but the rest of the world wanted to reverse it.

I had received several Facebook messages from friends in the States asking how the situation is. I replied that things were surprisingly calm and normal that morning. I also had an e-mail from SOA Watch, an organization dedicated to opposing the existence of the School of Americas, a U.S. military training center in Georgia where many Latin American human rights violators have been trained. SOA Watch was speaking out against the Honduran coup, which had been carried out under the command of General Romeo Vasquez Velazquez, a graduate of the School of the Americas. They message said that “the people of Honduras are going into the streets, in spite of the fact that the streets are militarized.” From my position in a quiet internet café in the Guadalupe, this seemed like an exaggeration. I forwarded the e-mail to a few AguaClara co-workers, suggesting that SOA Watch was exaggerating the situation here in Honduras in order to further its own cause.

I spoke with a Honduran friend on the phone in the afternoon. He said that we really still didn’t know very much about what the actual situation was. The means of communication (radio, newspaper, and television) were controlled by the same people who were now in control of the government. There could be people detained or dead and we wouldn’t know about it.

Aside from not going to the office, the rest of my day passed normally. There were protests against the coup going on at the presidential palace, but from what I had heard, the number of protesters was relatively small, in the hundreds. In the afternoon I encountered an acquaintance returning from the protests. He looked tired and said it had been a rough day.

Tuesday, June 30

After what had been a pretty slow Monday, I was ready to get back to work. The political situation be what it may, my job here is to work on water projects. On the way to the office, I stopped by Ruth’s to pick up my clothes. On the way I encountered a friend, another volunteer from the United States working in Honduras. I told her that I was on my way to the office. She asked me if I was sure it was opening. I said I was almost sure it was, since things seemed to be just about getting back to normal.

My friend informed me that things were not normal, that she had observed the protests at the presidential palace yesterday and that the confrontation between the military and the protesters had been so violent that many people were injured. She had also gone to the hospital where the injured and some dead bodies were also arriving. (Note: I have not heard these deaths confirmed by the media, but a few days later I spoke with a couple of patients in Hospital Escuela who were at the hospital that day. They told me that they had seen many injured people and a few dead bodies arrive at the hospital after the protest. They claimed that one person had been killed outside the hospital by a car that was speeding down the street to get away from the protesters. The patients said the protesters themselves had entered the hospital church as the fled from the police. The police had used tear gas to get them out and some of the gas had found its way into the room of these patients.)

This made me feel quite naive. Even though I realized the media was controlled by the government, the tranquil panorama I saw in my neighborhood, and perhaps the desire to see things go back to normal, had made me believe what I was hearing, or more importantly forget that things might very well be happening that I wasn’t hearing about. Just a mile away, protesters had been in violent confrontation with the military, but since I didn’t see it from my window, or on the way to the internet café, I figured it couldn’t really be all that bad. Hondurans all over the country could very well be taking to the streets, as the SOA Watch e-mail stated, and I might just not know about it. I was doing exactly what the people in charge wanted me to do, getting back to normal.

On the other hand, in returning to normal I was among the majority. I called the office to make sure they were opening and learned that everyone else was already there working. I told myself that I would at least try to be more aware in the coming days than I had been the day before. I had no intention to involve myself in any protests, or even get that close to them, but I did want to know as much as possible about what was going on.

Based on my listening and probing, the 6 – 3 majority opinion of the Hondurans in our office was in favor of accepting the coup. The difference of opinion was not along economic class lines. The group of 6 willing to accept the coup included the person who runs errands and cleans the office, an engineer and a member of the upper management.

While we were working in the office in the morning, there was a large demonstration in the central park to “Say Yes to Peace and Democracy” and support Micheletti’s new government. Thousands of Hondurans showed up, dressed presentably in white shirts, and demonstrated peacefully, holding signs written in English telling CNN to take note that Hondurans supported the new government. (Note: There have been allegations that these people are encouraged or coerced into demonstrating by their employers. A co-worker of mine told me later that multiple relatives of his had been sent to the protests by their employers, and attended for fear of losing their jobs.)

This manifestation contrasted starkly with photos of the anti-coup demonstration the day before, where eclectically dressed protesters, some wielding wooden sticks, throwing stones and burning tires, and some with bandanas masking their faces, confronted police and military personnel who were wearing riot gear and spraying tear gas. As they were forced to retreat, some of the anti-coup protesters damaged property and broke store windows. The majority of the anti-coup protesters were probably peaceful, and I don’t know whether the protesters or the military escalated the situation, but the end result was an unattractive picture. If undecided Hondurans sitting at home had to decide which movement to join based on their method of protesting, I think most would choose to sing songs and wave banners with the Micheletti crowd.

Wednesday, July 1

An anti-coup protest march passed the office. The number of protesters easily numbered in the thousands. Some, mainly the younger looking ones, were wearing bandannas over their faces, but the vast majority was not. The march ended peacefully.

My productivity in the office has been reduced by about 50%. The environment of tension throughout the city makes it hard to think of anything but the political situation. I spend at least a couple hours each day reading the news online. Another couple hours are spent discussing the situation with everyone from my boss to the security guard. Days are also shorter since they are usually shutting down the office early.

Thursday, July 2

El Tiempo, a major newspaper from San Pedro Sula that gives the most balanced version I’ve seen from the Honduran press, reported Thursday morning that Congress had officially suspended some articles of the Constitution that guarantee civil rights during the curfew hours. One of these articles was Habeas Corpus, the right to be brought before a judge within 24 hours of being captured. This apparently means that the government can now disappear people for more than 24 hours.

Another large anti-coup demonstration passed by the office while we were working. Like they day before, the protest seemed pretty passive, but the protesters left graffiti on pretty much every building they passed. From what I see this type of vandalism does nothing to further the cause of the protesters and does everything to damage their image. The APP secretary, who accepts Micheletti’s government, refers to the pro-Micheletti protesters the “pacifists” and the anti-coup protesters the “leftists”. Vandalism on the part of the “leftists” makes it easier for the other side, the side that is legitimating the violent ouster of a president, to appropriate the “pacifist” label.

Some of the grafiti  in Colonia Palmira, a neighborhood near the APP office. I found all this grafiti and much more within a few city blocks. I think most of it was put up when a march went by on Thursday, but I photographed it Sunday:

 

The office closed early in the afternoon because of concerns that the demonstrations could disturb traffic. After dropping my stuff off at my apartment, I headed downtown for lunch. The protesters had all left and it looked pretty much like a normal day, aside from all the graffiti along the protest route. Workers, employees of the municipality I think, were already out on the streets painting over the graffiti. After grabbing lunch I stopped to browse in a bookstore. I found a few men there engaged in political discussion. As I was leaving I struck up conversation with one of them. He said he identified with the Nationalist party but was supportive of Mel and the Cuarta Urna. He seemed to genuinely believe that Mel wanted to use the Cuarta Urna to change the constitution to benefit the people, not to seek another term. He said that Mel likely had not submitted a budget to Congress for this year because Mel feared that Micheletti, who would soon be leaving Congress after 35 years of service, would rob all he could from the budget on his way out.

The man said that those behind the coup now found themselves in a difficult position, with popular discontent and international disapproval mounting. Honduras would not be able to persist long isolated from the rest of the world. The politicians behind the coup remained united he said, because they had to be in order to protect each other, but if one person behind the coup started to break, they could begin to unravel. Currently, he said, it was a bit of a waiting game and the ball was in the court of those who made the coup.

Another customer in the bookstore suggested that the ruling politicians had gotten rid of Mel because he was not letting them rob as much as they were accustomed to. These are the type of people who make big profits, like from the fast food restaurants, while the people of Honduras suffer, he said. These men suggested, and I have heard others suggest, that the business moguls of Honduras, the ones who own the fast-food restaurants, the newspapers and the TV stations, were behind Micheletti and the coup.

The first man said that the international response made him hopeful. All countries of the Americas had united to say that this sort of military coup was no longer acceptable. They mentioned that Venezuela is not so socialist as some might think and that after all of the recent bailouts, it is clear that the United States is not completely laissez faire capitalist.

These comments made me think that perhaps something good could come of the political crisis in Honduras. It is uniting the Western Hemisphere around certain democratic principles and could also promote change in Honduras.

Friday, July 3

Ther large protests continued, both pro-Micheletti and anti-coup. As before, the pro-Michenetti protests received complete and positive news coverage. After the first protests on Monday, the anti-coup protests were becoming larger and had been more peaceful.

I walked by the Hotel Honduras Maya after leaving work and found the area cordoned off by police and soldiers. Reporters were crowded around the hotel entrance. I asked a bystander what was going on and he said that the Secretary General of the OAS José Miguel Insulza was in a meeting inside. From what I read, Insulza’s visit was unproductive. He refused to meet with Micheletti because the OAS does not recognize him as leader of Honduras. In the meetings Insulza did have, the current Honduran government refused to discuss returning power to Mel Zelaya and Insulza refused to discuss other options.

Saturday, July 4

In the afternoon I headed down toward the airport with Dan, the Fullbright scholar working with AguaClara, to try to catch a glimpse of the anti-coup protest going on there. By the time we got to Metromall, where we parked Dan’s car, people were already returning from the protest. The food court at Metromall was full of people eating, many probably getting back from the protest. I talked with a group of about 8 men from Santa Barbara, most with cowboy hats (Mel style), one with a Ché shirt. They looked more like farmers than protesters, but had been in Tegucigalpa five days participating in the manifestations. They said they had come in a personal vehicle since the military was making it hard for bus traffic to get through. I wonder if Ché Guevara ever retired to a mall foodcourt after protesting.

The question on my mind in the afternoon was whether Mel will come the next day or not. First Mel had said he was coming Thursday, then Saturday, now Sunday. Despite reservations from some OAS members, he continued with his plans to return to Honduras Sunday accompanied by Latin American presidents who support him. The current government stated that it would arrest Mel if he returned to Honduran territory. If he did show up it would be a showdown.

In the last couple of days, the government seemed to have let up a bit on its control of the media. Or perhaps the government continued with its control but the media had become more adept at subverting it. Radio Globo, a radio station with a very pro-Mel bend, was on most of the day with reports on the pro-Mel demonstrations. In the afternoon they had a program dedicated to taking calls from around Honduras and around the world. The vast majority of the callers were condemning the coup. Radio Globo still seemed to play a lot of music given that they are the only voice of the left in such turbulent times.

Radio America, one of the largest radio stations in Honduras, had a half-hour segment sponsored by the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras, an organization dedicated to remembering the people who were disappeared by Honduras’ military governments in the 1980s. This half-hour segment, which I understand they put out once a month, was adamantly against the coup. It included material from Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch and from Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! I am not sure how they got it on the air. Perhaps it was paid advertisement, or perhaps this organization has too much respect in Honduras for it to be silenced.

In the last few days I was hearing more people describe the situation here as polarized. As media outlets like Radio Globo were heard and people came from around Honduras to the capital and the pro-Mel protests grew in size, perhaps people were realizing that Mel did have quite a bit of genuine support.

Sudnay, June 5

Until Sunday I had kept my distance from the protests. I figured I could pretty much see what was going on from a distance, and that it was safer to stay away. After hearing for several days in a row that the anti-coup marches had been peaceful, I decided that it would be interesting to at least go and watch for a bit. Sunday’s protest was starting at the Universidad Pedagogica, a public university about 1.5 miles from my apartment. At 10am I hopped in a cab that dropped me off at the point where the road had been blocked for the protest. A wide variety of people were present, young, old, male, female, city people and country people. Many were wearing cowboy hats and red bandanas. Most people wore the bandanas around their necks, but some used them to cover their faces. I saw quite a few young men carrying wooden sticks and wondered how peaceful the protest would really be.

I sat down next to one man from Catacamas, Olancho. Northeast of Tegucigalpa, Olancho is the department where Mel is from. The man said that there were about 50 busloads of people from Olancho in Tegucigalpa and that he had been in Tegucigalpa since Friday, June 3. He came in bus, which he said was a difficult trip because the military was trying to prevent the passage of people to the capital. He said the military had shot out the tires of seven buses to prevent them from traveling, a tactic I have heard various times that the military is using.

As the crowd got ready to move, the protest organizers started to animate them and counsel them to not use force. Organizers moved through the crowd confiscating the sticks I had seen people carrying earlier. A man on a megaphone told people that if someone near them was taking part in a violent act, they should take a picture of them and then stop them. He said that there very well might be infiltrators in the crowd trying to provoke violence, but they must resist and maintain a passive march. At about 11 am the crowd started moving. They went down the entrance ramp to Boulevard Fuerzas Armadas, the main 4-lane divided highway that cuts through Tegucigalpa, and headed toward the airport to welcome Mel. I headed home.

Photos of the protest:

 

The question on my mind remained, “Will Mel arrive?” Without any agreement with Micheletti’s government, his arrival seemed like it would be a bad idea. The archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, had been on cadena nacional Saturday evening and Sunday morning urging Mel not to return because a bloodbath might ensue. In the early afternoon, in cadena nacional, the director of civil aviation said that the airports were open in Honduras, but that Mel’s plane did not have permission to land. He said that the other leaders who were coming with Mel would also need permission from the Honduran government to enter the country. After this message was reported over 5 times, Micheletti, a couple of his current ministers and one ex foreign minister came on the air for a press conference. Micheletti denounced the mobilization of Nicaraguan troops along the Honduran border and asked Nicaragua and Venezuela to respect the sovereignty of Honduras. In the questions that followed, one reporter asked Micheletti to give more specifics of the mobilization of Nicaraguan troops. He replied that the mobilizations had been small and that it was not confirmed whether they were sanctioned by the president or commanders in the Nicaraguan military. He gave no specifics as to where the mobilizations had taken place. It sounded like he was trying to justify his government’s repression by fabricating the threat of a Nicaraguan invasion. 

Shortly after the cadena, Radio Globo reported that Mel would be arriving to Tegucigalpa at 4 pm. Even though Mel attempting to fly into Tegucigalpa when he had already been denied permission seemed irrational, I was not very surprised that Mel was going through with it. Tens of thousands of supporters were at the airport ready to meet him. The initial barriers around the airport had apparently been breached or opened so that the protesters where able to advance right up to the perimeter of the airport. I left to run an errand and when I returned at about 4 pm found that they were repeating Micheletti’s press conference en cadena. When his press conference ended, the cadena continued with a message from an Evangelical leader. I did not feeling like listening to his message, but I suspect he was encouraging the population to remain calm under its new government.

When the cadena finally ended, and CNN and Radio Globo were allowed back on the air, viewers and listeners learned that the protest at the airport had gotten out of hand, the military had forced the crowd back with tear gas, and one person ended up dead. Mel was flying over the airport in a Venezuelan plane but was unable to land because the officials on the ground had obstructed the runway by parking vehicles on it. CNN was playing audio of Mel and the Venezuelan captain being interviewed by Telesur, a Venezuela-based channel sponsored by the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Venezuela, as they both sat in the cockpit flying over Honduras. Mel might not have landed, but he sure made a show out of his attempt.

After the day’s events, the de-facto Honduran government implemented a 6:30 pm curfew. After watching CNN for an hour or so on my neighbors’ TV, I came back to my apartment and found only music and sports on the radio. At least the cadenas nacionales had ended for the night.

June Update

After spending Easter Week with my parents in San Antonio, Texas, my travels and vacations finally came to an end for awhile. Aside from a couple weekend trips I’ve been in Tegucigalpa for the last 2 months. It’s been nice to be in one place for awhile.

Saturday, June 6 we inaugurated the Cuatro Comunidades treatment plant, which has been up and running for two months. The inauguration was a success, with a couple hundred community members and quite a few visitors from outside the community. There was live music and plenty of food for the celebration that ensued after the speeches were over.

We managed to get a full page article about the inauguration in La Tribuna, one of the main Honduran newspapers:

http://www.latribuna.hn/news/45/ARTICLE/66324/2009-06-10.html

(this link doesn’t seem to be active anymore, but maybe you can get a cached copy from Google)

 

 Antonio getting interviewed by the media

Approximately 500 plates of food were served to community members and guests.

It’s not a party without a Run Chun Chun (traditional string and percussion ensemble)

The new plant has been running relatively well. We still have the same problems with the lack of an operator during the night, but other than that the operators have been producing very clean water. Since the community is small and uses hardly any water at night, the water board is experimenting with shutting the plant down during the night. So far they have had pretty good results.

The search continues to fund our next project. We have several potential communities but no money to build plants in them. Our main funding strategy has been to pitch the project to mayors and then count on the mayors to finance or find money to finance plants in their towns. We have submitted budgets and proposals to the mayors of Gracias, Lempira and Atima, Santa Barbara, two municipalities in western Honduras, and are hoping they will find some financing. Both are quite excited about the prospect of an AguaClara plant in their community, but also have quite a few other projects on their plates. If you or anyone you know wants to donate money to a good cause, let me know. With $40,000 you could give clean water to 350 families in Agalteca, a smaller community that doesn’t have access to sufficient funds to finance its own plants.

For the last 10 days Monroe, the director of AguaClara and a lecturer and researcher from Cornell, has been in Honduras visiting. This week he gave a 6-day course on sustainable drinking water treatment plant design at the Universidad Politecnica de Ingenieria, a new private engineering school in Tegucigalpa. Nearly 50 Honduran engineers, most of them from the national water authority SANAA, attended the course.

Just before leaving for Texas to see my parents, I moved to another apartment. I had enjoyed living at Ruth’s, but was ready to have a little more space and privacy. Ruth was also thinking of moving her bedroom into my old room, so the timing was good for a change. I now pay $105 a month for a one-room apartment about five blocks from my old place, still in La Guadalupe. Others have described my current situation as tenement housing, but I like it. There about 15 apartments in the small complex, which is behind a small restaurant called “Comedor Mina”.

My apartment building. The door is on the left. From the front it might not look like it, but there are about 15-20 apartments.

The scenery outside on the street the apartment building is on.

The steps up to my third-floor apartment.

The entrance to my apartment.

The view out my front door.

My third-floor 16’ x 8’ one-room apartment has a bathroom in the corner separated from the rest of the room with a curtain. The walls were painted and the floor was tiled before I moved in, so it has a pretty shiny look to it. My neighbors are friendly and there are always several kids playing or hanging out on the steps up to the third floor. For how many people are living in such a small place, things are really quite quiet. It also feels like a very safe place to live. The owner’s brother lives in the apartment complex and works as an all-night security guard at a mechanic’s shop across the street. Whatever time I come home he is always outside. The parking lot where we sometimes park the project pickup truck overnight is also just down the block.

My only complaint with the apartment is the leaky roof. Instead of having a normal peak, the part of the roof over my apartment slopes inward to a gutter that runs the length of the room. When the first big rainstorm hit, the gutter was filled with trash and began to overflow. At 11pm I woke up to a wet bed and a half-inch or water on the floor. Cleaning the gutter the next day resolved this problem, but there are still a few leaks in other places that result in a wet floor when it rains hard. These leaks are minor, however, compared with the problems in the neighborhood a few blocks away called Barrio de los Hucos, (neighborhood of the smelly people). The houses there are so close to the creek that when the creek overflows during heavy rainstorms they are flooded with smelly, contaminated water.

My room on the inside.

The not-so-functional roof design.

About 10 days ago I was awaken at 2:25 am by creaks in the roof and then a shaking bed. A 7.1 Richter earthquake off the north coast of Honduras was felt throughout the country. No serious damage was done in Tegucigalpa, but in the northern part of the country houses, walls and a very large bridge were destroyed.

It’s hard to believe that today I have exactly two months left in Honduras. Three months from now I’ll be in Berkeley, California starting grad school. It should be a change of pace.

American College Girl in Disguise

On the rutted dirt road up to the water treatment plant in Tamara is a meticulous white brick house with a dozen beautiful potted plants out front. It is the house of Doña Blanca and Don Geronimo, an elderly couple. Both must be in at least their seventies but they live independently and happily. They sell bananas they grow in their backyard and charamuscas, plastic baggies filled with sweet fruit juice and then frozen into a treat similar to the “Mr. Freezies” we have in the United States. Having passed their house hundreds of times on the way to the plant and having purchased hundreds of bananas, we know the couple pretty well. They always invite us in for a sit and a chat.

I think Doña Blanca and Don Geronimo stay young by working. When you ask Doña Blanca how she is she’ll often tell you “Estoy bien porque aqui estoy haciendo oficio. (I’m doing well, because here I am doing housework.)” She maintains her house meticulously and is quick to apologize if you come in the morning before she has swept. Don Geronimo, although much frailer than Dona Blanca, is often found in the back yard cutting weeds with his machete in one hand and his metal cane in the other. Don Geronimo has two elderly brothers living in Tamara who are just as spry as he is. His brothers can often be found out for a stroll through Tamara. One afternoon I encountered one of them roughhousing with a couple of teenagers in the pool hall. Although they have their fair share of wrinkles, these three little old brothers have found the fountain of youth.

When my mom and godmother Kathy came to visit the treatment plant in Tamara, we stopped by to meet Doña Blanca and Don Geronimo. Doña Blanca was busy fixing a leak in the roof that day. She was standing on top of a 55-gallon drum to reach the tiles she was rearranging on the roof. After a long chat, the couple took us on a grand tour of their expansive backyard, Don Geronimo precariously shuffling along with his cane and Doña Blanca taking advantage of the tour to collect some firewood.

Doña Blanca and Don Geronimo on their porch surrounded by Doña Blanca’s beloved flowers

In January, when the group of students from Cornell was visiting, I stopped by Doña Blanca’s place looking for some bananas. In the front patio I found what looked like a young teenage girl in her pajamas sweeping the patio with a home-made broom. “¿Esta Doña Blanca? (Is Doña Blanca around?)” I asked her. “You must be looking for my grandmother,” the girl replied in perfect English. “I’ll go get her.” It turned out the young girl I found cleaning up the patio was Dona Blanca’s 22-year-old granddaughter who is studying biology at the University of Rhode Island. She lives in Rhode Island with her parents and comes every year to visit family in Honduras. She had come the day before from Tegucigalpa to spend the night with her grandparents.

I am still amazed that a college girl on winter break from the University of Rhode Island could fit in perfectly sweeping Dona Blanca’s patio in Tamara with a homemade broom. That feat clearly takes an adaptable person. But being a grandchild of Dona Blanca and Don Geronimo, she must have the advantage of good genes.

The Mosquitia

The last two weeks of March, my friends from home Charlie and Erik came down to see Honduras. Looking for adventure, we spent most of their time here traveling in the Mosquitia, the large, remote region that covers much of eastern Honduras. Traveling by bus, river, ocean and car, we made a 7-day circuit around a very large chunk of Honduras. The trip involved more sitting than I think any of us had ever done in a week, but the views and the chance to see a truly remote area were worth it. My co-worker Antonio also accompanied us. He had worked and lived in the Mosquitia several years ago, so was able to show us the ropes.

Day 1 Tegucicalpa to Palestina

We left early in the morning from the middle of the market in Tegucigalpa. An aging retired school bus from the United States would take us directly to Palestina, Olancho, the frontier town near where we would start our journey on the Patuca River. As we headed east through the department of El Paraiso and then turned north into Olancho, the bus was taking its time. The upside was that we stopped twice to eat and use the bathroom. The downside was that the trip took 6-hours. This felt a bit long, especially during the intervals when we were forced to sit three-to-a-seat. It was good practice for all the sitting to come though.

On the bus we ran into a friend of Antonio’s named Lilia. When he worked in Palestina Antonio had eaten at Lilia’s mom, Dona Juana’s house. We would be pitching our tents in Dona Juana’s yard that night. Lilia lives in Tegucigalpa but is building a house in Palestina so comes often to visit the family and check up on construction. This time she brought a bale of used American clothing (something like Goodwill rejects I assume) with her to sell in Palestina.

Arriving in Palestina, we made our way to Dona Juana’s house to leave our things. They welcomed Antonio like he was one of the family and were also extremely friendly to us. Our plan was to get on the first boat that we could find going out the next morning. The river was currently low, so they said it might be harder than usual to find transportation. We went to inquire at the hotel where most of the pipanteros (boatmen) stay when in town. The owner there gave us the phone number of Don Dionicio, a pipantero she said was likely heading out the next morning.

While hanging around the hotel, a man walked in with his thumb bandaged up and a revolver stuck in his belt. In this part of Olancho guns are the norm, and he was one of the first of many armed Olanchanos we would see. I don’t know if Olancho is really that much more dangerous than other parts of Honduras. Guns are just a part of the culture. “See all these simple little houses in town,” Antonio told me. “Almost all of them, no matter how humble, have guns inside.” He explained that in Tegucigalpa, if a family can spare any money, they invest it in a good stereo and a TV. Here in Olancho, the first thing they buy to make their household complete is a good gun. This culture is probably not all that much different from the American West. Nearly all of the people in Palestina are transplants or descendants of transplants, many from Southern Honduras, who came to this new frontier to get free land. Antonio said some also came running from the law. While I’m never particularly comfortable around armed people, I assume that if you don’t mess with them they won’t mess with you.

Dona Juana and Lilia made us a great dinner and we bought 12 beers to share with the family. At about 8 pm Antonio called Don Dionicio to see about transportation. We found out he would be leaving the next day early for Wampusirpi with a boat full of merchandise and we were welcome to join him. Antonio realized he had heard of Dionicio, who has a large general store in Wampusirpi, back when he was working in the area. Dionicio said his normal price was 1500 Lempiras a person, but that he would give us the ride for 1000 each. He said a friend of his could give us a ride down to the river dock at 4:30 am. We accepted the offer and Antonio was able to negotiate for the friend to pick us up at 5:30 am, giving us an extra hour to sleep.

Day 2 Palestina to Somewhere on the Rio Patuca

At 5:30 am we were in front of city hall waiting for Don Diocicio’s friend. He pulled up at the agreed-upon hour and said the trip down to the river would cost 300 Lempiras. His normal price was 400 Lempiras he said, but he was giving us a deal. We were starting to see a pattern here. People there tell you they’ve already reduced their rate so you don’t feel the need to do any negotiating yourself. 300 Lempiras seemed a bit steep, but divided by 4 it wasn’t bad and we certainly had no other transportation options. After a chilly 20-minute ride, we were at the river. This being the main entry point for river traffic down to the entire Rio Patuca, I had been expecting at least a dock. What we found was a cleared out section of shore where people pulled their boats up.

The ride to the river landing

 

The vehicle we took to the river landing

The river landing

The boatmenb must not be too concerned about the aesthetics of the river. All of the outboard motor oil bottles get thrown on the beach.

Three pipantes tied up on shore. The one to the right is ours.

But we also found Dionicio, “Don Nicho”, for short, and his nephew Josue preparing the boat. Up until now I have said we would be traveling down the river in a boat. In reality we would be traveling in a pipante, pretty much the only craft aside from rafts that anyone uses to travel the upper Patuca. They are used for everything from crossing to the other side of the river to run an errand to multi-day trips. Pipantes range greatly in size, but all are long, narrow, and carved out of one, single hollow log, usually of mahogany or Ceiba. The smallest pipantes might be about 12 inches wide and 15 feet long. There is not enough room to sit on them, so the driver stands up and pushes his way along the river’s edge with a long pole. When the river becomes too deep, he must switch to a paddle.

Don Nicho’s pipante was about as big as they come. Powered by a 60-horse Yamaha outboard, it was 56 feet long, about 4 feet wide in the middle and about 3 feet deep. Aside from about 8 inches of planking added on to increase the freeboard, the entire craft was cut from a sigle Ceiba tree trunk. Josue said Don Nicho had made the pipante himself. I assume that means he hired people to do most of the carving. Today, the pipante was loaded up with what I estimated to be about 8,000 pounds of cargo and gasoline. The cargo included soft drinks, flour, cornmeal, plastic chairs, axes, machetes, files and about anything else you might sell at a general store in the middle of the Mosquitia.

Don Nicho´s pipante with a full load  (photos courtesy of Charlie)

We found out that Don Nicho’s pipante wouldn’t be leaving any time too soon (good thing Antonio had negotiated for the extra hour of sleep) so decided to look for our last meal in civilization. Erik would make a remark a few days later regarding the abundance of food in all parts of Honduras as long as you had a little money. He boasted that, despite the limitations in his Spanish, he could probably arrive in any small Honduran village and have a hot plate of beans, rice and tortillas in front of him within 10 minutes. Given that Erik likes to eat, this attribute of Honduras was a selling point for him. The river “dock” was no exception, and in about 10 minutes we were desayunando típico (having a typical breakfast).

Don Nicho and Josue still hadn’t had breakfast, so we had about an hour to sit around, let our food digest and use the facilities before getting underway. We probably shoved off at about 8:30.

Resting before the voyage

Even though I knew our trip would mainly consist of sitting in a pipante on the river, before setting out I hadn’t thought or asked much about the logistics of actually getting down the river. I had heard the river was low and that that might mean some pushing, but I pictured a very wide, slow, calm, muddy river. It turned out that the upper half of the Patuca was narrow and fast-moving. Parts of the journey more or less amounted to whitewater rafting in a 56-foot long dugout canoe loaded with cargo that weighed about the same as two mid-sized cars.

When we approached the most difficult of the rapids, Don Nicho would often drift down to take a closer look, decide on a route and then motor back upstream to take a run at it. Speed and momentum must have helped when confronting the rapids. Don Nicho would steer the boat from the back, while Josue stood up front and pointed out rocks. In sharp turns, Josue would also use a paddle to direct the front of the pipante. Sometimes water would splash over the bow. Every once in awhile we would scrape up against a rock, which would produce a loud scraping sound and throw the boat off balance a bit. Don Nicho has been running the river for 30 years and said he has never flipped a boat or lost any cargo. That, and the fact that it was in his best interest not to flip the boat this time either, gave confidence that we’d arrive safely, even when what we were seeing and feeling wasn’t exactly reassuring.

There were also shallow parts where the boat got stuck. We hit the first one about an hour into the trip. The pipante ground to a halt and Josue and Don Nicho immediately kicked off their shoes and jumped in the knee-to-thigh-deep water in their jeans. They began twisting the boat back and forth about its center in an effort to dislodge it from the bottom as the river pulled it downstream. After about a minute of helplessly watching them, the four of us kicked off our shoes and jumped in too. Don Nicho, Antonio and Charlie pushed in the back and Erik, Josue and I pushed in the front. Don Nicho directed the effort of twisting and heaving. It became evident that we weren’t making much progress. In what I thought an ingenious solution, Josue and Don Nicho threw the full 18-gallon fuel canisters overboard, tying them together and to the boat with a long rope. Throwing the canisters out both lightened the load and created a very strong drag force to pull the pipante off the bar it was stuck on. By this point, a man and several women who lived on the shore had also jumped in to lend a hand. Finally, the boat broke free and we all clambered over the sides as it accelerated downstream. Don Nicho started up the motor, and Josue began hauling in the chain of fuel canisters. The whole process felt a bit like tipping a sailboat: a long slow effort to get underway again and then a mad rush to stay with the boat and get it under control once it jumps back to life.

Josue helping to guide the boat through the rapids (photo courtesy of Charlie)

Pushing boat off of a shallow spot

We would get stuck once more that day. The second time we freed the boat without throwing fuel canisters overboard, but Erik and I were nearly swept away by the current as the water climbed up to our chests. While the center of the boat was on a shallow spot, where we were standing and pushing the river was quite deep. Making matters worse, the boat was slightly crosswise in the current, making the current much stronger on our upstream side of the boat. We both climbed back in the boat and moved over to the other side to push before we were swept away.

Along the edge of the river we saw dozens of prospectors panning for gold. Many had simple camps set up on the river, and panned for gold the old-fashioned way, knee deep in the water sifting the sand in a large round pan. Others had machines mounted on rafts to extract the gold. Gas motors on the rafts run pumps that suck the sand up from the bottom of the river. The sand goes though some sort of mechanism that sifts out an infinitesimal quantity of gold and then gets thrown back in the river. This prospecting must not be too profitable, since no one seemed to be doing it on a large scale, but it must be profitable enough to make it worth their while.

Josue on one of the motorized gold digging machines.

When it became too dark to see the rapids, after about 10 hours underway, we pulled over to the beach below a house owned by some acquaintances of Don Nicho. A 50 or 60-something man lived there with his daughter and several of her young children. Dinner was a freeze-dried meal Charlie and Erik had brought from the States, a few boiled eggs Don Nicho bought from our hosts and gave to us, and a cup of coffee generously provided by our hosts.

Wood is abundant in this part of the country, and all of the houses are wooden structures, with plank floors and siding, built on stilts several feet above the ground. The wooden houses all seemed pretty large and clean, masking the simple and unhealthy conditions that their inhabitants were likely living in. This house had a small kitchen, a sitting room with a couple hammocks for Josue and Don Nicho, a couple bedrooms for all of the usual inhabitants, and an extra room large enough for us to set up both of our small tents in it. Despite the size of their house, a couple of the kids were quite small for their age and looked malnourished. The small children slept together on a thin mat spread out over the hard wood floor and one girl was coughing all night long. Her coughing didn’t seem to arise enough concern for her mother to get up and do anything about it.

The house where we spent our first night.

Day 3 Somewhere on the Patuca to Tukrún

We were on the river at first light. Don Nicho didn’t think we would make it to Wampusirpi in the 2 days he had planned on originally, but thought we would at least get close. We only got stuck once the second day, but Don Nicho spent more time stopping on the shore and doing errands than the day before. It became clear that we were entering his territory and that he was sort of a big guy in that neck of the woods. He stopped to talk with nearly every pipante that passed and stopped several times along the shore. This made sense since I imagine that chance encounters on the river are one of the few ways people here have to communicate with each other. A couple of the people we encountered wanted to borrow money from Don Nicho. One woman’s father was sick and several hundred miles away. She wanted to put one of her cows in hock to get enough money for her mother and her to visit him. Don Nicho said he was sorry but that he didn’t have any extra money on him. One man, who was missing an arm and looked like his face had been cut up with a machete, gave 2,500 Lempiras to Don Nicho for safe-keeping. He said he’d rather not carry the money himself and that he’d feel better if Don Nicho had it.

Don Nicho had some land on this stretch of the river and was clearing one parcel of it for cattle grazing. Josue had been planning on stopping off there to set up a camp for workers who were coming to clear the land. He would be there alone for a couple days and seemed excited for the adventure. At first it sounded like Don Nicho was in favor of the plan, but as we neared the property he must have reconsidered. As we passed by Josue asked why we weren’t stopping to let him off and Don Nicho just kept on motoring down the river. He probably decided Josue wasn’t ready for that much adventure.

Josue, who we began to refer to as Daddy Yaknee once we left him behind in Wampusirpi, was an unlikely character to be traveling up and down the Patuca in a pipante. Keeping a watchful eye for rocks off the prow of the pipante, he sported a black cap with large dollar signs embroidered on it. He was only 20 years old, but had lived two years in Miami, installing security equipment with a work visa, and had picked up a decent amount of English, particularly the four-letter words. He said he’d been in jail 5 times during his tenure in Miami, not for doing anything criminal, just for getting in fights with people who looked at him wrong or in some other way disrespected him. His favorite phrase was “I’m hungry as sh!*”, which was unfortunate because he had brought none of his own food and was dependent on what we gave him. Since Josue seemed to be a bit volatile, we tried to stay on his good side and ended up sharing quite a few snacks with him. Josue didn’t display a gun, but told us he was carrying one. He said that when he had a son he’d give him a gun to bring to school by the time he was 8 years old. The other kids at school can really be rough sometimes and a guy has to be able to protect himself he told us.

Despite Josue’s rough personality, he was also a 20-yr old in awe of his uncle. Even though he was pretty good at talking back to him, Josue couldn’t say enough about Don Nicho’s experience navigating the river, or about how much he liked being out here on the river. You could tell how much he wanted to be the big man and stay alone setting up camp at his uncle’s property and how it hurt his pride when Don Nicho decided he wasn’t ready.

Daddy Yankee riding up front

A picture we took arriving in Wampusirpi. Daddy Yankee is on the left  (photo courtesy of Charlie)

In the afternoon we stopped one place to pick up some long wooden boards someone had cut for Don Nicho. We dragged them alongside the boat for a bit to a property where a lot of his family seemed to live. We passed Don Nicho´s son and what appeared to be a couple of nephews fishing on the shore and they came to meet us at the property where he would drop off the wood. His son had a shiny revolver sticking out of his pocket; one of the younger relatives had a pistol stuck in his waistband and the other an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. The guy with the AK-47 couldn’t have been more than 18. All looked friendly, but I wasn’t about to look the wrong way at any of them. Josue later explained to us that Don Nicho’s son had a lot of cattle and a lot of money, and for that reason needed extra protection. Don Nicho’s mother also came down to meet us. He dropped of quite a few provisions with them. Just as we were leaving, we picked up a woman and her two young children as passengers (the wife and kids of the man who was missing an arm I think) and were on our way once again.

 Attaching the wood to the boat (photo courtesy of Charlie)

By the time we got to the next stop, we paying passengers were perhaps getting a little sick of all the errands. As I walked on the edge of the boat to the front to bring get some food to bring back, I lost my balance and landed feet-first in the water up to my stomach. I jumped right back in, but the damage had been done, my pants and shoes were soaked and my pride a bit wounded. It was at the point in the afternoon, after sitting on the boat so long, and faced with the prospect of sitting for a few more hours in wet jeans, when the whole mishap wasn’t really all that funny. I lumbered to the back of the boat to dump the water out of my boots and await our departure.

Just before we pulled off, the woman Don Nicho was leaving provisions with came down with about 20 pounds of soft fresh cheese called cuajada and a pot of steaming boiled yucca. There could not have been a better cure for my situation. Don Nicho, perhaps sensing that we were a little weary of the journey and of the errands, told us to take all we wanted of both the cheese and the yucca. We took the remaining yucca to go in a rinsed-out quart bottle of motor oil and Don Nicho installed the large tub of cheese on a chair just behind my head. As we motored down the river I reached back and grabbed chunks of the salty goodness until it started to rain and we covered ourselves up with tarps. Before arriving at our destination we got stuck once again and had to get out an push, at which point it no longer mattered that I had gotten my jeans wet.

20 pounds of cuajada that tasted so good  (photo courtesy of Charlie)

Yucca in an oil bottle (photo courtesy of Charlie)

As promised, we did not make it to Wampusirpi that night. As darkness fell we found ourselves in the village of Tukrún, were Don Nicho’s daughter owned the main business in town, a general store complete with a generator, a TV, and of course hot dinner for sale. We had a great dinner and split a couple of cold pops before heading back to the beach to sleep in our tents. Don Nicho slept under a tarp in the back of the pipante guarding the merchandise.

A house in Tukrún

Day 4 Tukrún to Wawina

Early morning on the beach in Tukrún

After about 2 hours of early-morning travel, we found ourselves in Wampusirpi, something of a metropolis in the middle of the Mosquitia. There were a few cars, a restaurant and an airstrip. We left Don Nicho and Josue on the muddy riverbank to unload their cargo while we took off to get breakfast and see the town. We were instructed to arrive later to Don Nicho’s house to see if he had found us a pipantero (boatman) to take us on the next leg of our journey. At his house we were greeted by his friendly wife who had slices of watermelon to go around. The local pastor was also in the kitchen slurping watermelon. He informed us that going to Barra Patuca, the Carribean mouth of the Patuca River, as we had been planning, was not a recommendable option. The police had been cracking down on drug trafficking there recently and this was resulting in firefights at night. He said it would be much better to get off the river before reaching the coast and take the canals to Brus Laguna, a larger and safer town.

On the river in the morning

Unloading inWampusirpi

The restaurant where we ate breakfast (photo courtesy of Charlie)

Plotting our course as we wait for breakfast (photo courtesy of Charlie)

Drying our clothes in the sun while we ate breakfast

The church in front of Don Nicho´s house

Don Nicho in front of his house (photo courtesy of Charlie)

By the afternoon Don Nicho had put us in contact with Stanley, a friend of his heading down the river to Ahuas. Stanley and the young nurse accompanying him had just finished chauffeuring a medical brigade from Michigan around to different villages farther up the river. Their boat was now empty and they were heading back home to Ahuas, where the nurse worked in a hospital where Stanley’s sister was also a doctor. The lady in the restaurant where we ate breakfast had told us that Ahuas was reachable in about an hour and a half, so we were expecting a short trip. I began to think it might take a bit longer though, since Stanley made even more stops than Don Nicho had. It appeared that he and the nurse were trying to get rid of all of the leftover medicine from the brigade. We stopped at various houses along the river where they filled up plastic bottles with de-parasite medicine (something like a parasite eating laxative I imagine) and dropped off eye drops. As we were shoving off toward the next stop, the nurse would give quick dosage instructions and tell the people to share the medicine with their neighbors. The whole process didn’t seem too controlled or effective to me, but perhaps the nurse knew what she was doing.

As the afternoon wore one, we were startled to hear from the nurse that we likely wouldn’t arrive today. The restaurant lady’s 1.5 hour trip had turned into a multi-day journey. She must have been completely misinformed or thinking we were traveling by plane. After a reality check and a look at the long distance between Wampusirpi and Ahuas on the map we realized that believing her had been an exercise in wishful thinking. We would pitch our tents that night inside a large wooden warehouse on the beach below a town called Wawina. The warehouse had been used by a rich congressman from the region but had now been abandoned. The woman we found at the warehouse shared beans with us and Stanley had a few flour tortillas along to share. We also cooked up the freeze-dried, packaged variety of beans and rice to pass around.

Our second craft wasn´t as full as the first

Erik looking very tall and white (well a bit red actually) on the beach

The warehouse we stayed in in Wawina

Day 5 Wawina to Brus Laguna

The people of Wawina getting ready to go to work in their pipantes

After a couple hours the next morning we were in Ahuas. True to form, 10 minutes after entering a small house on the riverbank we were served four plates of chicken, rice and beans. We then took off for a tour around town. The most notable characteristic of Ahuas was how flat it was. I felt as if I were standing on the prairie in Kansas. The nurse who had been on the boat with us offered us bucket showers at her house and we accepted. It felt good to be clean after several days.

In the afternoon we left Ahuas for Brus Laguna on a large passenger launch that Stanley had suggested. He was also going to Brus as well and would travel on the same launch. Since the river would be deeper from here on out, larger and faster boats could make it through. The boat we took had double 200 horse motors and must have had capacity for about 35 people. It made daily runs between Ahuas and Brus.

The minute we got into Ahuas, our esteemed captain Stanley went into relax mode. He must have needed to unwind after a long week on the river with the medical brigade. By the time we boarded the boat he had already put down several beers and was in a good mood. He was friends with the boat captain and sat in back of the boat watching a movie on a laptop with another friend. En route they flagged down a pipante to buy more Port Royal beer and were jolly again. As we sped down the narrow, curvy river (the ride could have been from a video game) I kept looking back to make sure that the captain was not consuming any beer. We arrived in Brus Laguna unscathed but too late to catch a boat to go any further.

Brus, on a large lagoon that empties to the coast, had a noticeable coastal feel to it. The houses were still on stilts, but some of them were now right over the lagoon. There were way more bars than the other towns we had been in, a few hotels, and a few restaurants. We found a nice wood hotel right on the water and shared a room with two beds among the four of us.

We found a decent restaurant for dinner and a beer. As night fell, it became evident that there were a lot of mosquitoes coming up from the lagoon. By Minnesota standards there really weren’t that many, but the difference in Honduras is that the mosquitoes are dangerous, especially on the north coast where they can carry malaria. We sat out on the pier for a few minutes until we realized we were slowly being eaten and then headed back to the hotel to sleep. The room had fans, but they would be turning off at 10pm when the town´s generators shut down for the night. Antonio predicted that there would be quite a few mosquitoes in the room when that happened. As ridiculous as we knew it looked, and even though we were sick of sleeping in it, we decided to set up my tent on top of our double bed. At least the surface would be soft.

Charlie and Erik agreed that sleeping in a tent on top of a bed would look ridiculous and decided to chance it without the tent. At 11pm I woke up to the sounds of them setting up their tent as well. Once the fans went out they had to hide in their sleeping bags to avoid the mosquitoes and this had proved to be suffocatingly hot.

The boat landing in Ahuas

The Mosquitia prarrie

A typical house in Ahuas

A composting letrine

Our ride to Brus Laguna

Brus Laguna

Day 6 Brus Laguna to Batalla

After a breakfast of baleadas (a coastal delicacy of homemade flour tortillas folded in half around refried beans and white, salty, grated cheese) we started looking for a ride farther down the coast. Initially we had hoped to find a ride all the way to Batalla, where we would get a pickup ride along the beach to the highway where we would get a bus to Trujillo. However, in the morning we could not find anyone who wanted to go that far. We would have to get a boat to Cocobila, where they assured us we would be able to find regular passenger service to Palacios in the afternoon. Paying more than we wanted to, and not going as far as we wanted to, but having no other options, we took the boat to Cocobila.

I had been told when we entered the Mosquitia that the Mesquitos didn’t have as many guns as the people in Olancho. So far that seemed to be only marginally true. The Mesquitos tended to have rifles instead of hadguns and machine guns, but still seemed pretty well armed. In this boat, one man was busy polishing his revolver while another man carried a rifle wrapped in a cloth to protect it.

Crossing the lagoon in the 20-some foot open boat with an outboard motor was a change in scenery. After crossing the lagoon, the boat captain was faced with a decision. We could enter a canal that would take us along the coast to the next lagoon, or we could cross out into the open ocean, speed along the coast and cross back into the next lagoon. The former option must have been slower and probably involved the risk of getting stuck in the shallow canal. The latter option involved crossing the shallow bars between the lagoons and the ocean where 6-foot waves were breaking violently. The older female passenger behind us who had passed through the violent surf before and couldn’t swim was arguing fiercely that we take the slower canal route. Despite her protests, the guys running the show charged out to the open ocean.

As we crossed the bar, one man in front of the boat spotted the waves and signaled to the driver how to approach them. The preferred technique seemed to be to face the waves head on and gun the motor to get over them, preferably not hot while they were breaking. The whole process looked a bit tricky. Following Antonio’s lead, I unlaced my hiking boots to aid in swimming should that become necessary. We had been traveling by water for 5 days and had yet to see or hear of a life preserver.

Once we got away from the bar, the ocean was much calmer. We cruised along at a good pace until we reached the mouth of Rio Plátano, which had it’s own bar complete with crashing surf. Coming in to the bar was calmer but could very well have been more dangerous. If the boat were overtaken by a breaking wave disaster would ensue. Disaster did not ensue and we entered the beautiful Rio Plátano. From the river we turned off on a canal that brought us to Laguna Ibans, another large lagoon where they left us off at a community called Cocobila.

The waves we were up against

The village at the mouth of the Rio Plátano

Plying through the canals from Rio Plátano to Laguna Ibans

Our transportation from Brus to Cocobila

Arriving in Cocobila, the regular passenger transportation we had been promised was not available. The regular boats only left early in the morning to get people to Batalla in time to meet the pickup trucks leaving from there. The only way we could get to Batalla today would be hiring an express trip that would cost us about 40% more than the normal fare. While we deliberated our options we decided to have a look around. From Cocobila it was only a short walk to Raistá, a small community with an ecotourism resort where Antonio had worked on a composting latrine project several years ago. There we met a man named Carlos who worked for an NGO in Belen, the next set of houses about 400 yards down. He said we were welcome to pitch out tents in his yard if we decided to stay the night. Still unsure of our plans, we decided to check his place out since it was near the beach and we were itching for a swim in the ocean.

The beach in Belen was deserted, long and beautiful, even if littered with quite a bit of trash. We speculated that all of the trash that gets dumped in the Patuca river probably makes it out to the ocean, mixes with the trash people dump in the ocean, and then washes up on shore. Part of being in Honduras is learning to deal with tragedies like trash on the beach. If you let the trash on the beach ruin your perception of the entire beach, or if you let the diesel exhaust in Tegucigalpa ruin your perception of the entire city, you’ll never enjoy anything in this flawed yet beautiful country. At the same time, you don’t want to embrace or accept these flaws because then you will forget that they should be repaired.

After playing in the waves and swallowing some salt water, we headed back to Carlos’ place where he offered us freshwater showers. We had lunch back at the resort Antonio knew about and contracted a boat from the owner there to get to Batalla. The boat ride was uneventful and at about 4:30 pm we were pulling up to the beach in Batalla.

On the beach in Belen

When we arrived at Batalla, we were surprised to see a pickup parked on the shore. The trucks normally leave early in the morning each day, but they said they would take us immediately for a slightly higher fee. Looking at the depressed little beach town in front of us, I immediately started to dream of spending the night in a comfortable bed in Trujillo, the beach town we were planning to head to when we left the Mosquitia. After a quick consultation, we decided to take the offer and get the heck out of Batalla. Another plus was that since only we would be riding, we would all get to ride inside the double cab of the huge 3.0 L Toyota diesel pickup.

We loaded our things in the back and took off through the sandy and winding streets of Batalla. We realized the guy at the wheel was a chubby teenager, who drove with recklessness commensurate with his age. He assured us that he was 18 and had a license. Thinking we were on the fast track out of Batalla, we were surprised when the car stopped after 45 seconds at another boat landing. After standing around for a bit at this landing, we were told to transfer into another car, this one a slightly older-looking Toyota 2.8 diesel. It was a step down in vehicle, but the driver in this one was capable of growing facial hair, so I was happy to make the trade. As we sat waiting, I mentioned to Antonio that we were experiencing a phenomenon common when traveling in unknown territory. There was a plan being executed that those around us were aware of but we were simply passive recipients of. We were just sitting there waiting to see which car they told us to get in next. I also mentioned to Charlie and Erik that it seemed like many of our adventures seem to end quickly and sooner than planned. On hiking trips we often hike a few extra miles the last few days to get out to the car a day early. It appeared that this one would turn out to be no different.

We sat another 10 minutes, the driver took out a plate of Chinese food, presumably to eat during the trip, and we tore off down the sandy 2-track road. About 3 minutes later, still in the outskirts of Batalla, the driver received a phone call. When he hung up he pulled off the road and began to turn the car around. He explained that there was a water crossing on the road where the car had to cross on a raft and that the raft operator was going home for the night. We would have to spend the night in Batalla and go the next morning. Because of the hassle, he would give us a discounted rate at 5 am the next morning of 350 Lempiras each instead of 500.

This trip would not end prematurely like many of our others, but as Antonio quickly pointed out, I was right about one thing: we were clearly along for the ride on this trip, and the recipients of the plans of others, which we knew very little about.

After thoughts of a soft bed in Trujillo, our accommodations in Batalla didn’t look too good. In fact I think it was probably about the shabbiest place I have ever paid to stay in. We would certainly be pitching our tents on top of the beds. The bathrooms were flushable latrines outside. Fortunately, the owner of the rooming house also sold food and was very friendly. Once we got settled in, she sent her young son Esaul with us to show us around town. He was about 10 years old but spoke very good English. He went to a bilingual school across the bay in the larger town of Palacios.

Exploring Batalla with our guide Esaul. The road in the lower photo is the one we would be traveling on the next morning.

On the way back from the beach with Esaul, we passed by some men who had another pickup truck that made trips out of Batalla. They said they would take us at 4 am the next morning for 300 Lempiras instead of 350. Always interested in saving a buck, we told them we would think about it and that if we were interested we would be waiting for them at our “hotel” at 4 am. As we walked away Esaul informed us that these guys were not to be trusted. His mom had taken a ride with them once for a cheap price, but when they arrived at their destination they demanded that she pay full price. After hearing this I realized that these guys did look even shadier than the guys we had accepted a ride with first. We decided it would be best to get a ride with the original outfit, and hoped these new guys wouldn’t come around looking for us in the morning.

For dinner, our host served us each a good plate of fried fish, fried plantains and coleslaw. Cabbage is a very easy food to get sick from, especially if it is not washed with clean water. Water looked to be scarce in Batalla and I’m not sure where it came from. As a precaution neither Antonio nor I ate the coleslaw. When I looked over at Erik’s plate though I saw that he had already polished off all of his coleslaw. He didn’t get sick, so apparently the coleslaw was good or he has a pretty strong stomach.

Day 7 Batalla to Trujillo

At 4:30 the next morning we were packed and ready to go. Our original driver had come by at 4:15 and said he was going to pick up some other passengers and would be back for us soon. At 4:30 the new guys pulled up and asked if we were ready to go. This could be a sticky situation. I was afraid they might have taken our response the night before as a commitment to go with them and that they might be upset with us now. These were not the kind of guys I wanted upset with us and standing in the dark at 4 am in Batalla was not the time or place to have anyone upset with you. I told them that since they had not been there at 4 am we had committed to go with the other truck. Thankfully, they accepted this answer and took off. At 6 am our ride showed up, but already nearly full. The cab was full, the roof was stacked with luggage and the back of the truck was nearly full of people. Today we would be riding in the back. They tied our backpacks to the pile on the roof; we squeezed ourselves in and took off at what seemed like full capacity.

The truck, before about half of the 17 passengers had gotten on.

As we left Batalla we picked up two more passengers. At this point there were 5 people inside the cab and 11 people on the back (two of them small children), and one young man standing on the roof holding onto the pile of luggage. What ensued was the most dangerous and most uncomfortable ride I have had in my life. We held on for dear life as the truck sped down soft dirt roads, lined with branches that nearly knocked the guys on top off the truck. Things were even more harrowing when we started driving right on the beach, at the point where the surf keeps the sand wet and somewhat smooth, and where the waves came up and wet the tires of the truck. Given the speeds we traveled at, the soft surfaces we were on, and the high center of gravity of the pickup´s load, a rollover seemed somewhat likely and if that happened a death seemed even more likely.

The only thing I took comfort in was that the driver had surely done this dozens of times before. We also felt fortunate to not be in the black Nissan that left Batalla at the same time we did. That car looked to be managed by the same group of men we had run into the night before. The Nissan also carried passengers, but very few. We were told that everyone preferred to go with our driver because he wasn’t insane. The Nissan attempted to race us, speeding ahead and throwing up a cloud of black diesel exhaust every once in awhile and then dropping back because the driver wasn’t really all that good at what he was doing.

The black Nissan crossing a wet stretch on the raft while we wait our turn to go accross.

Antonio and Erik looking positive despite the uncomfortable position they are in (photo courtesy of Charlie)

I was relieved when we arrived at the road. The ride was less than half over, but at least I figured it should be safer from here on out. It might have been safer, but was certainly no more comfortable. The dust permeated everything, and the washboard road and the two-by-four I was sitting on were making my seat feel pretty raw. The man I sat next to lived in the Mosquitia and traveled this route round-trip every two weeks to purchase goods to sell. I would be reluctant to make the trip ever again in my life, much less every two weeks. After about two hours on the road, the three and a half hour trip was over and we were at the turnoff to Trujillo. I have never been so happy to get out of a vehicle. Antonio would continue on for another 20 minutes to Tocoa where he would get a bus to La Ceiba and then to Tegucigalpa. We would head to Trujillo for a couple days of R and R at the beach.

Aside for the last harrowing ride, the trip had been a success. We’d spent less money than we had planned on and had seen about everything we wanted to. The Mosquitia was not quite as intimidating as I had expected, and I would love to go back someday, especially to see some of the more protected areas in the Rio Plátano Biosphere.

Honduras, Belize and Guatemala in 2 weeks

The last two weeks of February my cousin Greg was visiting from Minnesota. Given his interest in archeological ruins, and my desire to see something new, we planned a route though Honduras, Belize and Guatemala that would bring us past the Mayan ruins of Tikal and Copan. Greg arrived to San Pedro Sula, and we spent two nights in the Honduran beach town of Omoa. From Puerto Cortez, a larger port town near Omoa, we left on a 3-hour ferry for Placencia a beach town in Belize. We spent two nights there and took 4 busses across Belize and into Guatemala to arrive at El Remate, near the ruins of Tikal. We spent two nights there, taking in the ruins one morning, and left on an 8-hour overnight bus to Guatemala City. After a day of taking in the sights of the city and a Saturday night out on the town, we left for Antigua, the former colonial capital of Central America, and a popular tourist destination. We spent one night in Antigua and then headed to Lake Atitlan farther west in the Guatemalan highlands. From Atitlan, we returned to Honduras, spending two nights in Copan Ruinas and then heading for the airport again in San Pedro Sula. The trip involved a lot of hours on the bus, and not too many days in one spot, but allowed us to see quite a nice chunk of Central America. Below are some photos and descriptions of the places we went:

Bajamar, Honduras

One day when we were staying in Omoa, Honduras, we took the bus to a sleepy Garifuna beach town called Bajamar. The Garifuna are a coastal ethnicity who migrated from the island of Saint Vincent and are a mix of esaped slaves and indigenous South Americans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garifuna). Because Bajamar was deserted, long and relatively clean, it was the most appealing beach I have seen in Honduras. We seemed to be the only visitors, but the locals were friendly, especially the ones spending their Sunday afternoon drinking Gifiti, a “medicinal” concoction of herbs steeped in cheap hard liquor.

Placencia, Belize

Traveling to Belize feels like leaving Central America for a Caribbean island colonized by the British. The locals speak either English or a thick Creole derived from English that is impossible for me to understand. The country, due to its English language and reputation for relative safety–although some people have told me that reputation is ill-deserved–seemed to have a lot more cautious American vacationers and retirees than Honduras or Guatemala. Everything is more expensive, and the average citizen seemed to enjoy a higher quality of life. Perhaps it helps that there are only about 320,000 people in the country compared to 7.5 million in Honduras and 7 million in El Salvador.

Placencia, the beach town we stayed in for 2 nights, seemed to be a growing vacation destination. Apparently much of the beachfront part of town was actually created artificially by filling in mangrove swamps to make land. The only affordable accommodation we could find was Miss Leslie’s Travel Inn with a double room for $15 U.S. a night. The general degradation of the place, the cracks in the wooden walls, the peeling linoleum floor, the particleboard shower and the mini-doors you had to duck to get through made it a bit uncomfortable, but we saw no signs of insect infestation.

The beach in Placencia, which we later found out was man-made.

A couple of the many expensive-looking catamarans presumably available for charter.

Our rustic, but relatively bug-free accomodations at Miss Leslie´s Travel Inn

The local Chinese restraunt / General store / Outdoor saloon

A snorkelling trip we took to a nearby cay that is a national park.

Tikal, Guatemala

After a bus ride across Belize and into Guatemala, we arrived at El Remate, a town outside the Tikal Ruins. We found a cheap hotel / hostel called Sak Luc, where we also ran into a guide named Juan who convinced us to take his tour of the Ruins the next day.

Our double room / hut at the Sak Luk

We got up the next day for the 5:30 am departure to the ruins. I’m not much of an archeology buff, but found the ruins quite impressive, both because of the in-depth and well-researched history lesson we were given by our guide Juan and because of the shear size and beauty of the ruins.

The ruins of Tikal sticking out of the jungle

Juan, our very knowledgeable guide

The very steep steps up a very tall and steep tower

Greg on the edge of the very steep tall slope

Me looking scared at the top

Guatemala City

We debated some as to whether it was worth spending a night in Guatemala City, especially since most tourists seemed to avoid it due to safety concerns. In the end we figured it would be worth the day and night to see the largest city in Central America. We found a double room in Xamatec hostel in Zone 10, a nicer part of town, for $45 a night. The room was a bit pricey but worth it for the safety. They also let us check in at 6:00 am, right off the overnight bus from Tikal, so we could sleep a couple extra hours without paying for the extra night.

Compared to Tegucigalpa, Guatemala City feels larger and quite a bit more developed. The highway system is much more complex, with more freeways and overpasses. The Central plaza was much larger than Tegucigalpa’s.

A fancy plaza near our hotel.

Greg downtown

The central plaza with a government building in the background.

The central plaza with the cathedral in the background.

Antigua, Guatemala

About 45 minutes from Guatemala City, Antigua seems to be the city with the most concentrated tourism in Guatemala. Antigua was at one time the seat of Spain’s Colonial Government in Central America, so there are a lot of old historical buildings. The area has been hit be several earthquakes in the last few centuries, so many of the historical buildings are in ruins or have been rebuilt.

Antigua´s very well decorated fleet of buses I can only hope they put as much work into the mechanics of the buses as they do into the aesthetics.

One of the many old buildings in Antigua

El Palacio de Generales, the building that was once the seat of the Spanish colonial government in Central America

Greg under the arch of the Palacio de Generales

The Cathedral, or the part of it that´s been rebuilt

Traditional Catholicism is apparently alive and well in Guatemala. This sign reads:

“Requirements to receive the plenary indulgence:

-Confess

-Attend mass

-Take comunion

-Pray for the Pope

One can get indulgences for a deaceased person. One indulgence per day.

June 28th, 2008 to June 29th, 2009

San José Cathedral, Antigua, Guatemala¨

Volcán Pacaya

After arriving in Antigua, we immediately took off for an afternoon / night trip up Volcán Pacaya, an active volcano near Antigua. As the tour bus pulled up the trailhead we were bombarded by small children carrying wooden poles and yelling “estiik!, estiik!” They were renting walking sticks for the trip up the volcano. It was somewhat cute and comical, but also sad to see that the kids were dirty from all the dust around and looked pretty poor. A lot had un-wiped runny noses, a chronic problem I imagine due to the chilly climate. They were also fighting an uphill battle, since there were almost more stick vendors than tourists and only half the tourists wanted sticks anyway. Whether these kids actually supplemented their families’ incomes with their work, or whether they were using it to buy treats for themselves, I don’t know.

The sticks seemed entirely unnecessary to me, and perhaps being hardened by spending too much time near pushy vendors in Honduras, I didn’t really consider buying one. But when a 2-for-1 deal was offered-2 sticks for 5 Quetzals (65 US cents)-Greg convinced me we should get a couple. In retrospect, I was being a tightwad to not want to give up 32 cents to a cute kid renting a walking stick. As we made the business transaction, I asked our stick vendor whether this was a contract for purchase or a contract for rental. He informed me that the sticks were strictly on lease. “I will be here waiting when you arrive from the hike,” he said in Spanish. “Hand the sticks over to me. My name is Josue. Do not hand the sticks over to any other child.” Just after we made the deal with Josue, another child came forward, assuring us that the thin sticks Josue had just sold us would break during the journey. For the same price he offered us more robust sticks. We decided to chance it using Josue’s sticks.

For some reason, I suspected we would be hiking up to the tippy top of the volcano, but that the hike would be quite easy. As it turned out, we only hiked about halfway up the side of the volcano, to a point near a slow stream of lava oozing out the side of the volcano. The trail was far from impossible, but more difficult than I had imagined. The sticks definitely came in handy, especially on the last rocky and windy part. We got close enough to the lava flow to be able to feel the heat rising up from below us. We could also see red-hot boulders rolling down the side of the volcano in front of us.

As dusk was falling and we started the hike down, Greg and I realized that flashlights might have been a good idea. The tour group was so large, and no mention of flashlights had been made when we reserved our spots, so we hadn’t even thought of them. Luckily, about 60% of the tour group had thought of flashlights, and our guide kept us close together. Using the ambient light from the other flashlights, and our ever-useful sticks as prods in front of us, we were able to shuffle down the trail without falling.

As we approached the trailhead, we were again bombarded by the same kids, who had hiked partway up the trail to reclaim their sticks. A small girl, maybe about 7 years old, wanted Greg and me to give our sticks to her. She said she didn’t have any sticks. We felt bad but told her that these were Josue’s sticks. A little farther down a kid who looked remarkably like Josue came up to us and asked us to handover the sticks. When I asked, he said he was Josue, so we handed over the sticks. Greg even took a picture with “Josue” our trusty stick vendor. As we arrived at the trailhead, we encountered the real Josue. He snatched one of the sticks from the imposter and when we left it remained unclear who would end up with the second.

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

We spent our last two nights in Guatemala in Santa Cruz, a small village on Lake Atitlan, reputably the most beautiful lake in the world. Lake Atitlan, in a highland climate and surrounded by 3 volcanoes, was quite beautiful. We stayed in a double room in a hostel called the Iguana Perdida (Lost Iguana). The hostel, so highly recommended by the guidebook that we figured the author must be a part owner, was a backpacker’s Mecca. Everyone we met spoke English, and many were there for their second time. Some people were there working as volunteer labor, serving as bartender or cashier for a couple weeks in exchange for room, board, and half-price drinks.

Every night there was a large buffet dinner, to which all guests were invited, where everyone sat talking at a long table. The Monday and Tuesday nights we were there this dinner transitioned into some beer drinking and, for about half of the guests who were more fun than Greg and I, a long night of partying. We met a lot of interesting people, traveling for various lengths of time and various reasons.

Aside taking place in Guatemala, life in the Iguana Perdida didn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with life in the rest of Guatemala. It was a great time for a couple days, but I don’t think I’d much enjoy 2 weeks there.

The boats that the locals and tourists use as public transportation to get around the lake.

In Guatemala, there are two obvious ways for tourists without out their own cars to travel: normal bus (dubbed “chicken bus” by the backpackers) or direct shuttle. The normal buses are old U.S. school buses, with crazy drivers, and traveling on them often requires making a few connections. The shuttles are 15-passenger vans that usually go directly from one tourist location to another and have drivers who are probably equally as crazy.

Cost-wise, I think the options come out about the same, especially if you have to pay for a taxi to get from one normal bus terminal to another. Comfort-wise, surprisingly, I think the normal “chicken” buses win hands down. There’s also something to be said about riding transportation with real, live Guatemalans while you’re visiting their country. Safety-wise, the shuttle companies claim to win. I assume they say they’re safer because there are rarely any Guatemalans on the shuttle buses, you don’t have to get on an off in any sketchy bus terminals and they might be presumed to be better-maintained and have better drivers (maybe). But given the large size of the normal busses and the fact that tourist shuttles are sometimes held up because crimanals know there are tourists with money on-board, my gut feeling is that safety is a toss-up. Time-wise and simplicity-wise, though, the transfer-free shuttle ride wins.

Because it was a long way from Lake Atitlan to Copan Ruinas, Honduras, we opted for a $13 U.S., 7-hour, cramped, butt-numbing ride on a shuttle.

Copan Ruins, Honduras

We arrived in Copan Ruinas at about 7:00 pm, found a cheap hotel and started the last leg of our trip. Once again we were in Honduras and familiar territory for me.

Waking up in Copan, we hit up the ruins in the morning. I had seen the ruins twice before, both times with a guide, and thought that the extra $10 each for a guide was worth it. When we arrived, the guides were either trying to price-gouge us or didn’t look too great, so we opted to go without. As it turned out, this gave us more flexibility, and a chance to see the nooks and crannies of the ruins that I had not seen on the guided tours. Anyway, from Juan in Tikal we had already heard a better explanation of the Mayan empire than any guide in Copan would probably be able to give us. At the hieroglyphic staircase, probably Copan’s most famous ruin, we ran into a Japanese documentary film crew taking panning video of the staircase with a cameral on a large boom. It was interesting and somewhat comical to watch the process: artistic Japanese film maker speaking to translator, who translated to Honduran manipulating camera. The whole thing looked a bit like overkill to me, but I’m sure the nature of the task is more complex than it looked to my untrained eye.

The last night of our trip we had a nice dinner courtesy of $25 my mom had sent with Greg. Afterward we visited a bar called the Red Frog. I’d been there a couple times before, but this night we really got to hear Dan, the young owner’s, story. He’s from California. A few years ago, he had never been to Honduras before, had never tended bar, but bought the place on a whim. He’s been there for ever since and seems to be having the time of his life. His local bar has turned into the place to be for foreigners in Copan, at least the less-classy half of those foreigners. For the last hour or so we were there, the only other customers at the bar were Pat and Alice, an elderly couple that was anything but your typical elderly couple.

From their nearly unintelligible accents, I assume Pat and Alice were from some part of the British Empire, perhaps Scotland or Ireland. When I asked where they were from, Pat said they were from all over. They’d been in Honduras for quite some time, and had also enjoyed multiple extended periods in Bulgaria. Pat treated us each to a half-shot each of some Bulgarian moonshine Dan was keeping for him in his fridge. Pat said the stuff was home-made from cherries, and for clear hard liquor it was surprisingly not horrible.

From all of his tattoos, I can only imagine that Pat might have been some sort of a seaman. He now sat smoking, coughing and drinking beer at the end of the table, telling of his recent late-night escapades in Puerto Cortez, one of Honduras’ more shady cities, and remembering last Christmas when Dan and he apparently let off a ridiculously-illegal quantity of large bottle rockets. One of the bottle rockets even found its way into the bar, nearly hitting Alice in the head.

For the couple of hours we were at the Red Frog, Alice sat quietly next to us reading a book and nursing the same beer, which had a foam insulator around it. She looked over at me a couple times and quietly whispered some words to me, smiling and giggling, but the words were completely lost on me. She seemed to have some sort of mental disorder or uniqueness. Pat and Dan told of one night when she was reading a book quite quickly and Pat came up to her and looked at it. “This book’s in German Alice!” he said. “You don’t speak German.”

Pat and Alice must not have the most conventional, safe, or recommendable retirement, bouncing around Honduran and Bulgarian bars. But the two both seemed remarkably happy, so if it works for them I can hardly knock it.

The Dilema of Development Work: How much to do?

The work we are doing in this project can be summed up by one buzzword: “Capacity-Building”. Superficially, this capacity-building is happening at two levels. Cornell University and we volunteers are building the capacity of Agua para el Pueblo (APP) personnel to design and build water treatment plants and put them into operation. APP personnel, in turn, are building the capacity of community water boards and local operators to successfully operate these water treatment plants. All development work should be about capacity-building: teaching people to fish rather than giving them fish.

I say that this description of the capacity-building process is superficial because the learning is really happening in both directions. I am certain that I have learned much more from APP employees than they have learned from me. I’ve learned a language, a culture, and a line of work, while I’ve only taught them a little about the technical side of building and operating water treatment plants. Even with the technical issues, we are usually learning side by side, as this is new to all of us. Likewise, APP employees surely learn from the communities and water boards they work with. Each project is a new experience that provides knowledge that will help with the next project. This reverse capacity-building can almost always be reversed yet again. All that I learn from the Hondurans I work with will help me to be a more effective in teaching or working with other Hondurans in the future. All that we learn from the communities will help us to better serve other communities in the future.

While capacity is clearly being built in both directions, I will focus here on the direction I mentioned initially. After all, that direction is the main objective of the project. Donors contribute money for APP to build a plant so that in the end communities will end up with good treatment plants and know how to operate them, not so that APP employees get smarter. The donor probably is also interested in the APP employee getting smarter, but they care about that mainly because it will allow the employee to serve and train communities even more effectively in the future. Likewise, I’m mainly here to train Hondurans, not to train myself. I’ll surely get trained in the process, but that’s not the main reason they’re paying my salary. To simplify this even more, I’ll call the capacity-builder the trainer and the person who is having their capacity built the learner.

The dilemma of capacity-building is knowing how much to do. There are two extremes that the trainer must avoid. If the trainer does too much for the learner, the learner will never learn to fend for him or herself and will feel patronized or belittled. On the other hand, if the trainer does absolutely nothing other than give orders and instructions, the trainer will look like a lazy bum and will not gain the respect of the learner. It is also very easy for the trainer to lose touch with what is really going on with the project if he or she is not involved enough at the ground level. The trick is for the trainer to do enough of the nitty-gritty to show solidarity and remain aware of what is going on while not doing so much that initiative or agency is taken away from the learner.

Every day of work here is for me a balancing act between doing too much and doing too little. Today presents a prime example. In the construction of the Cuatro Comunidades plant, we are at the point of putting together a bunch of modules made out of transparent plastic roofing sheets (see photo below). This is a long, tedious job that also requires a little bit of experience, care in measurement, and a lot of patience. The materials in each of the modules cost about $60 and a day’s work for one of the community members working costs about $10 or less, so it’s worth it for the workers to take their time and make sure not to waste or ruin materials.

Antonio, the technician we work with, already has quite a bit of experience with putting together these modules, since he participated in the construction of the Ojojona plant and of the Tamara plant. However, the modules in this plant are put together a bit differently and are of a different size. We made a sample module when the Cornell students were here, and yesterday I printed off a detailed drawing of the module. With his experience, and these guides, Antonio was completely prepared to do the job with a couple of the potential plant operators (community members) helping him. However Tamar and I were planning to stay and help today as well. This would give Tamar a chance to see the process since she hadn’t built modules before. We would also be there to give Antonio any help or advice he might need, and to see the process first-hand in hopes of coming up with ideas to improve it.

When Antonio and his two helpers got down to work this morning, we realized they pretty much had the process under control. We were able to help him with a couple small problems, though. He was making some cumulative measurement errors in the cutting of the roofing sheets, which we helped him correct. Tamar also suggested he use charcoal to mark the sheets for cutting instead of permanent marker, which left a lasting mark in the panels which she feared might be toxic and leach into the water. After making these adjustments, in order to let Antonio take charge, and to advance in other work, Tamar and I took off with Wil, the engineer we work with, for the office.

As we left, I felt a bit like we were abandoning Antonio and his helpers. In the Tamara plant, Carol and I had done quite a bit of cutting, hole-drilling and pounding to help put the modules together. Perhaps today Antonio would think that I now thought I was too good to do that work. Perhaps the community members helping him would think, “These gringos have a great life, they just show up for a couple hours, give us a few orders about how to make the measurements better, and then take off for the air-conditioned office.” Despite, these concerns, I think we made the right decision. To have two engineers and a technician supervising a simple assembly project is overkill, and it is important that the community members see Antonio as capable of working without our help. Nevertheless, these decisions aren’t always easy to make.

APP personnel face these same decisions. One day Antonio said that Wil (the Honduran engineer on our team) had suggested during a meeting with Jacobo and Arturo (the bosses at APP) that Antonio, Carol and I were doing too much work for the local operators. Reportedly, he said we were climbing around in the tanks and hosing them down, while we should be supervising the operators while they did this. While I wasn’t at this meeting, given Wil’s style of work and Antonio’s style of work, it doesn’t surprise me that Wil made these observations. Antonio enjoys getting his hands dirty, showing off his manual skills, while Wil would normally prefer to supervise the physical labor of others. Both of these styles have advantages. Perhaps Antonio and Wil make a good team because of their differences. Antonio shows solidarity with the community, while Wil makes sure we don’t waste too much time in the nitty-gritty.

Sometimes I think this is a pretty ironic job. Tamar and I are here with the objective of putting ourselves out of work. When Honduran technicians and engineers can plan, design, build, and supervise the AguaClara plants without any support from us, we will have succeeded. In the meantime, we can measure our progress by how little work we do. If we’re not doing much, and Antonio and Wil are doing a lot, then we’re doing great. One week I could just show up to the office, sit on my butt every day, and claim to be making tremendous progress. Of course everyone would think I was a jerk. As you can see, this way of thinking can be both tempting and dangerous.

In my 18 months here, there has definitely been a trend towards doing less and less hands-on work. The first 6 months in Ojojona, Carol, Antonio and I spent more time at the treatment plant than the operators did. We dug ditches, glued pipes and even did some masonry work. This clearly took some responsibility away from the operators, but also allowed us to learn more about the plant and give the operators more detailed training.

Antonio digging a ditch at the plant in Ojojona back when we were involved there in a very hands-on way.

In the construction of the Tamara plant, I spent more time at the construction site than Wil, the engineer in charge. I hauled and glued pipe, tied re-bar and drilled holes. One day I even tried my hand at chiseling through hardened concrete. I sweated profusely and ruined clothes. I must have done some of these things in an attempt to prove myself, because my physical efforts surely didn’t do much to speed up the project. I don’t think I impressed any of the Hondurans with my physical abilities, but maybe I amused them. I did gain knowledge about and appreciation for the practical side of the construction process. Since it was Wil’s first plant and he was often busy ordering materials and drawing plans, my presence at the plant probably did help the construction process run more smoothly.

In the Cuatro Comunidades plant, Tamar and I haven’t gotten our hands too dirty. We go the construction site less frequently than Wil. While I might not feel as macho as I did when I was carrying pipes up the hill in Tamara, I think this trend is an improvement.

Luckily, as our involvement in the nitty-gritty wanes, there is a plethora of more office-related work to fill our time. In the last 6 months Tamar and I have spent most of our time editing drawings, analyzing budgets, writing e-mails, writing proposals and planning and giving presentations to prospective communities. Sometimes I fear that we are doing too much of the administrative work for APP. I wonder if we are almost administrating the treatment plant projects for APP. This doesn’t worry me too much, because I think we are involved in the administrative aspect not because the administrators at APP can’t do it, but simply because they don’t have enough time. Regardless, we will eventually need to hand the budgeting, fundraising and proposal writing (even when it’s in English) over to APP.

As volunteers / interns here, our roles in this project are quite undefined. Tamar and I are very much in charge of deciding what our involvement in the project is. Many times, I make this decision by looking for what needs to be done and doing it, be the job drilling holes, supervising construction, making drawings, or writing budgets. But in development work, I think it’s important to step back every once in awhile and evaluate your involvement. You must be involved enough to be aware and show solidarity, but not so involved that you steal the show or make yourself a permanent fixture.

A Multicultural Success

There are many things about the United States that I am not proud of, but every once in awhile I am reminded that we do get a few things right. When I received my absentee ballot in October for the elections, I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that for the three highest offices on the ballot I would be voting for a Muslim (U.S. Representative Keith Ellison from Minnesota’s 5th District), a Jew (Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken), and an African American (Obama). Best of all, these weren’t obscure candidates. In fact all three were favorites. Ellison and Obama won, and Franken is still embroiled in a war of attrition in court over the Senate seat. I didn’t hesitate to brag to my Honduran co-workers, some of whom had told me months before that the United States would never elect a black man president, about the multi-cultural nature of my ballot.

In the first half of January, when the annual group of Cornell AguaClara students came down to visit the Honduran end of the project, I was once again proud of my country. I was not sure this would be the case. The thought of 25 gringos traipsing through Honduras on a hurried two-week tour, snapping photos of water treatment plants, does not necessarily bring pretty pictures to mind. It would be easy for such a large group of English-speakers to become a self-sufficient island and not interact all that much with the Hondurans around them. It would even be easy to alienate the Hondurans traveling with the group, such as our co-worker Antonio, or Jorge, a Honduran friend of Monroe’s contracted to drive one of the minibuses the group traveled in. It would also be easy for the group of college students on vacation to party hard amongst themselves every night, even if the surrounding Honduran environment is not conducive to or accepting of doing such things every night.

Thankfully, there were few if any of the above-mentioned problems. It helped that the majority of the group was proficient enough in Spanish to effectively communicate with the Hondurans we met. Even those who came with absolutely no Spanish made sincere efforts to pick up and use important phrases. But, aside from not causing problems, this group also set a valuable example of diversity. When I think of universities and diversity, promotional brochures come to mind. I picture an African-American student, an Asian student, a Latino student and a white student sitting smiling together under the sun on a grassy lawn in front of typical academic buildings. As cliché and contrived as they seem, this group of 18 AguaClara students was a real-life version of one of those brochures.

Leopoldo, the Honduran translator with us, made a big deal of the multicultural nature of the group, to the point of exaggerating. In Las Cuatro Comunidades, when he was riding around with a megaphone promoting a health fair that took place in the community while the students were there, he advertised all of the different races of Cornell students that would be present. It was as if he was inviting the community members to come witness the multi-cultural circus that Cornell had sent to Honduras. When visiting a pottery workshop in Ojojona, Leopoldo told the artisan who was giving us a demonstration that one student was from Ghana, even though she is a U.S.-born African American. He said that another girl of Eastern European descent but born in upstate New York, was from Russia.

Leopoldo’s exaggerations not withstanding, the group was pretty diverse. Just look at the backgrounds of a few of the 18 students:

-Bolivian immigrant to the United States, first language was Spanish

-Taiwanese doctoral student

-Exchange student from Spain

-Grad student from mainland China

-Daughter of a German and a Chinese person

-Daughter of a Japanese and Caucasian person

-African-American

-Two Chinese-Americans

-A girl born in upstate New York but with parents who immigrated from Eastern Europe

Add to that 8 run-of-the-mill gringos from all over the United States, a professor with his wife and son, a 40-year old water treatment plant operator, a Honduran driver, a Honduran translator, and a Honduran water technician and you can see we had quite a smattering of backgrounds packed into our two minibuses.

(my apologies if I got anybody’s ethnic background wrong)

A photo of the group.

To watch such a diverse group of people get along so well on a trip and fit in well to Honduran culture was a pleasure. I first realized what a blessing this was when Lalo, the exchange student from Spain, mentioned that in Spain it would be hard to find such a diverse group of students all united and getting along together. I realized that in Honduras as well, this is not a very common sight. There are Hondurans of Chinese descent, but they don´t seem to be too integrated into the rest of the population. Many Hondurans regard them as shrewd business-people who toss mice into the Chop-Suey that they sell in their abundant Chinese restaurants. There are also Arabs, classified as “Turkos” by non-Arab Hondurans. The Arabs seem more integrated into the rest of society, especially high society, but are also commonly regarded as shrewd capitalists, perhaps justifiably so since they own a great many of the large businesses in Honduras. Honduras has its share of African Americans, but most of this population is on the coast and some Ladinos (mix of Spanish and indigenous background) still regard them with a certain amount of descrimination.

Clearly, we are far from racial integration and harmony in the United States. Maybe it´s still one of our weaknesses rather than one of our strengths. In fact, we might be in even worse shape than Honduras in this regard. However, the fact that a sample of 18 students from a U.S. university yields such a diverse and harmonious group, united to use its engineering skills to improve life in a developing country, ought to bode well for the future.

Two Central American Women

In November I ran into two completely unrelated Central American women who each made an impact on me.

A stranger in her own land

In November I traveled to Nicaragua for the high school graduation of a friend in Sabana Grande, the community where I volunteered a couple years ago. On the way back, just as the bus was about the leave the border for Tegucigalpa, three women got on. One sat next to me. Something was different about this woman, but I didn’t know what. When the bus attendant passed to sell tickets and asked her where she was going she said she had no idea, but that her travelling companions could tell him. She looked perfectly normal, like a Nicaraguan or Honduran, but didn’t appear to be very comfortable on the bus.

After being in Central America for over a year, I have made a habit of badgering complete strangers on busses. It makes the ride go quicker. I struck up a conversation with the slightly-out-of-place woman next to me. It turned out she had been livign in the United States, near San Bernardino, California, for about 20 years. She was now back in Central America for a visit, her fourth visit in 20 years. She was a native of Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, but was on her way to visit a sister in Honduras. She had never been to Honduras–hence her confusion as to where she was going–but was traveling with her daughter and another one of her sisters.

The woman had left her daughter, now twenty-something, in Nicaragua when she left, and now has another child in the states. She said that although she still has a lot of friends and family in Managua, much has changed since she left. From what she said, I got the feeling she feels much more at home in the United States than in her native Central America. It must be an emotionally wrenching experience to return for such a short time to a country and a daughter you have only seen four times in the last 20 years.

 

Banana Vendor in the Dark

At about seven o’clock in the evening a woman passes in front of our house in the dark with a basket of oranges and over-ripe bananas on her head. She sells the bananas, probably rejects sold to her at a cheap price or given to her, at three for five Lempiras (three for 26 U.S. cents). When she passes I usually buy a few bananas, despite their over-ripeness.

Last week I bought some bananas and asked the woman where she lived. To my surprise, she lived about 10 miles away on the highway that leaves Tegucigalpa to the north, toward where I used to live in Tamara. To get home every night, she first takes a bus to Carrizal, a somewhat dangerous colonia (neighborhood) on the northern edge of Tegucigalpa. From there she looks for a ride on the highway back to her house.

I am apprehensive to wait for a bus in Carrizal in the middle of the day. To be on the side of the road at 8-o’clock at night hitchhiking is unimaginable. Her only protection is probably that anyone who would rob her knows that she has very little to of value.

I am struck by the apparent hopelessness of this woman’s situation and her determination in facing it. She travels miles and puts herself in danger to sell low-quality bananas in a neighborhood where many of the people buy bananas at nearly the same price in a shiny supermarket. Perhaps she has a day job as well in the neighborhood. I didn’t ask her. If she does, it must not pay much if it pays to supplement that income with banana sales. She’s fighting an uphill battle, but she’s clearly a fighter.

January Update

I’m in the airport on the way back from two weeks at home for Christmas, New Years and a real Minnesota winter. The year since I went home last Christmas has passed quickly but been filled with plenty of experiences. Here’s a quick update on what I’ve been up to since last report.

 I continue to live with Dr. Ruth in La Guadalupe in Tegucigalpa. My room isn’t exactly a penthouse, but the location is amazing and Dr. Ruth has included Tamar (my co-worker who also lives there) and me as part of the family. There is also an amazing view from the roof at night.

Photos of Tegus from my Roof

The 18^th of October we broke ground on a new plant in Las Cuatro Communidades, several kilometers up the highway from Tamara, the site of the last plant. Even though we had been hoping to go bigger, this plant will be about half the size of the plant in Tamara. The innovation in this plant is in the reduced construction cost.

Since I’ve been here, Arturo Diaz, the second-in-command at Agua para el Pueblo, has been complaining that our treatment plants are too expensive and that we need to make the construction process cheaper for the plants to be more marketable. Initially we didn’t pay much attention to these complaints, since the AguaClara technology is much cheaper than any other treatment plant alternatives. Also, most of the cost of the plants is in indirect expenses rather than construction: the engineer’s salary, the technician’s salary, part of Arturo’s salary, transportation costs and training sessions. Our continual response was, “These plants are plenty darn cheap and we like them how they are!”

When Monroe, the Cornell lecturer and researcher who is the director of AguaClara, was visiting last June, Arturo was pulling out his usual complaints. He said that although these construction costs seemed cheap to us gringos, for a small community they were astronomical. The last day he was here, Monroe came up with the idea of scaling down the plants to make them shallower. Shallower tanks would be much cheaper to build. Even more important, shallower tanks would obviate the need for an elevated platform for the operator to be able to access the tanks. In the Tamara plant, the large, elevated concrete platform was a very large portion of the construction cost. Wil Serrano, the Honduran engineer we work with, had suggested we look for a way to eliminate the elevated platform in Tamara, but had been over-ruled by Monroe, Carol and myself. In the end, we have settled on 1.55-meter-deep tanks for the new plant and have managed to eliminate the elevated platform. It took a year, but the gringos finally got smart and gave into the Hondurans’ badgering.

The tank walls are already in place in Las Cuatro Comunidades and the construction should be done by the end of February. This time Tamar and I have much less involvement in the construction than Carol and I had in Tamara. Wil now has one plant under his belt and doesn’t need as much help from us. While it was a wonderful experience to live and work in Tamara, I am happy that the Cuatro Comunidades project has a more Honduran face to it. Living in Tamara sometimes meant that the water board and the construction contractor spoke to Carol or me before they spoke to APP personnel. I would much rather be working with the community through APP than be the mediator or messenger between APP and the community. The disadvantage is that we’re now inhaling diesel exhaust, fighting off thieves and answering e-mails in Tegucigalpa instead of getting our hands dirty in Tamara, where every cute little kid in town knew my name.

Construction on the latest plant in Cuatro Comunidades

 

Engineer Wilfredo Serrano supervising

 

Engineer Serrano and contractor Santos Martinez discussing the plans

As the project grows and our staff remains the same, the task-to-time ratio has skyrocketed. Deciding what to do next has become a triage process. Even if we stopped coming up with new ideas, stopped building new plants and stopped encountering new problems, I am confident we could keep ourselves busy for a year with what we have on our plate right now. With each plant comes the burden of “seguimiento” (follow-up). Even though we built another plant in Tamara and are in the process of building yet another in Las Cuatro Comunidades, we still need to keep tabs on what’s happening in Ojojona. On the back burner, we have the somewhat archaic-looking first, first plant that Cornell students helped design in the north-coast town called La 34. That plant was built before AguaClara was even a program and is now in a dubious state of semi-neglect. The community and water board say they are using the plant and that they are happy with it, but I doubt it is doing much to treat the water there. To get to the bottom of this situation we have been planning a trip to La 34 for a year now, but still haven’t gotten around to it. In the end we might write that plant off as a great learning experience, but a project that will likely not be successful in the long term due to various social and technical problems.

Another continual task is the development of future projects. We need to both select suitable communities and look for outside funding to finance the projects. We now have a list of potential communities and even have designs and budgets for some of them, so the community-research task has reduced recently. The financing part, however, is more urgent than ever.

 

A trip to a town called Jalaca to evaluate the feasibility of a plant there

Add to these tasks a project to improve chlorination in communities that don’t require treatment plants, the planning of a 2-week tour for the 15 Cornell students who came to visit in January, and the general logistical complications inherent to working in Honduras; and you can see that we keep pretty busy. The upside to this is there is hardly ever a boring moment. For the first couple months we were here, Carol, Antonio and I spent some long, slow hours at the Ojojona plant making sure it was working well. We may have spent more time operating the plant than the actual operators. Not so anymore. We now don’t have time to supervise that closely and have come to realize that while necessary at the first plant, it was also counter-productive in some aspects.

My mom and godmother Kathy came to visit for 5 days in November. They were able to get a whirlwind tour of the places I’ve lived and the projects we’ve worked on. Even more important, they were able to meet the people I work with and the people I’ve lived with. The ultimate irony was that I got sick to my stomach while they were here and they didn’t.

Visiting Esperanza in Ojojona

 

Visiting Reyna in Tamara

 

At the treatment plant in Tamara

 

A party with mariachis at Ruth´s house

 

Valle de Angeles

I spent Thanksgiving with a few U.S. volunteers Tamar and I have met and a group of U.S. marines that they know. The marines cooked a very tasty Thanksgiving spread for us in their massive house. The group of 10 or so marines guards the U.S. embassy 24 hours a day and lives a pretty comfortable life when they’re not on call. Their house is equipped a swimming pool, a pool table, a home theater and an amazing view. They even have hot water. As much as I like Honduran culture, I was glad I could be with some paisanos (countrymen) on the most American (American in the not-so-politically-correct United Statesan sense of the word) of all days. It was even better to be home with family, friends, and snow for Christmas and New Years.

APP and AguaClara on TV!

A couple months ago a Honduran news program did a feature on Agua para el Pueblo (APP), the NGO I work for. They visited a few of APPs projects, including the AguaClara treatment plants in Ojojona and Tamara. I got on TV for about 30 seconds speaking Spanish with a solidly thick Gringo accent. Tamar, my more technically savy co-worker, put the video up on you-tube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RavlJf-ZRFk

Below is a translation in case you don´t speak Spanish and would like to know what is going on:

Thousands of Hondurans live in the periphery of the principle cities
of this country without potable water service. They invest their money
buying water from tanker trucks or transporting water to their homes
from the nearest source.

But if this occurs in cities like Tegucigalpa, which is the capital of
the country, you could imagine what can be occurring in more rural
areas where people die from lack of hygiene. Lets see the report from
Rodolfo Velasquez.

Located in the Valle of Amareteca 25 minutes from the capital we find
the Community “Quebrada Honda” of 240 inhabitants dedicated to
business, agriculture or livestock.

“The crops that we cultivate are corn, beans, sorghum, and
livestock–different types right–like cattle and horses.”

This community does not have the basic necessary services. Even though
the electric grid passes through this sector, it does not service the
community.

“Well, here the problem here with the light is that the ENEE (electric
company) has said it is going to charge a fee, and the truth is that
the people here we are poor, we do not have the economic resources to
pay, because the cost is about 50,000 Lempiras.”

After the passing of Hurricane Mitch they are nearly disconnected
because of the poor state of the main road and the lack of a bridge.

The road, you can see, is a disadvantage, because there is no access.
Here, we work, and all that we haul has to on horseback because there
is no other mode of transportation.

Quebrada Honda has a coeducational school with 28 students thanks to
the “Cooperacion Espanola”, which has also built latrines here. But
they face a serious problem.

“Now the community has a big problem that is potable water. They do
not have this very important service. Often children need to collect
water in the afternoons after school, and there is also no electric
energy.”

For generations the population used the water from this small stream.
But now it is contaminated.

“Because the water we have here in the stream is contaminated. We
can’t drink it because there are neighborhoods above it. And we need a
water project because we don’t have one”

Despite everything, they use this water for domestic purposes and bathing.

“Due to the contaminated water we have a lot of problems because the
children have diarrhea problems and skin problems and other type of
contamination.”

This is confirmed with Kaylee Cobrado, her son with a skin disease.

“For 3 months I have been looking for a remedy, but I imagine its from
the water, because when I bathe him it produces a skin rash. He begins
to scratch, bumps appear and they get infected”

When it rains, these people rejoice because they can get the water
that falls from the sky.

“When it rains we rest from hauling water. Here the water is a very
sad issue because we have to sacrifice. Yesterday it rained so we have
plenty of water. And when we have to go haul water at times we have to
go in the rain or in the sun. Sometimes we have to go without coffee
because it’s a 2-hour trip. And when we have housework to do we have
to leave it undone to go.”

But there is hope for this community, thanks to the organization Agua
para el Pueblo (APP) that hopes to install a potable water system that
will have a cost of 2-million Lempiras, but only has one million to
develop this project.

“We are going to benefit 40 families with this project. There are 230
people that live here in this community. The first part of the project
is financed by Cooperación Espanola through two NGOs, CESAL from Spain
and APP of Honduras. SANAA is also making a contribution but we are
also soliciting from the Technical Cooperation Secretary (SETCO) the
complementary funds to be able to do this project, which is vital for
the development of this undeveloped community”

Communities like Tamara have been benefitted thanks to projects
developed by Agua para el Pueblo.

“Before we had problems with water because it came infrequently and
when it came out it came out dirty. There were times when we didn’t
have water and had to haul it from other places. And now thanks to the
project the water comes every two days and is clean water, chlorinated
and purified”

Over 500 families receive the benefit.

“The distribution network was reconstructed in 8 km of 15 in total
with larger diameters than existed before. Because they had a system
with 38-40 years, the reconstruction that they solicited was
necessary.”

In Ojojona a water treatment plant has also been installed.

“The plant is a technology that reduces, more than anything, the
dirtiness (turbidity) of the water–the dirtiness, the bacterial
contamination, the contamination from dirt and sediment that exists
because of erosion near the sources, which is normal in our
communities.”

In this manner they are improving the quality of life of the people in Ojojona.

“For example, in the past winters, the people here were drinking
purely muddy water and now the change that we have, we have improved
the water quality, through the use of the water treatment plant, and
we have seen good results in the health of the children and of the
population of Ojojona”

Students from Cornell University in the United States support these projects.

“What we are doing is giving technical support to the engineers and
the technicians at Agua para el Pueblo, who are building the plants
because the designs are done in the University of Cornell in NY where
we were students, and we are serving as intermediaries between the
university who is making the designs and Agua para el Pueblo who is
executing the project.”

In the same way, with the support of the government, the community of
Quebrada Honda is hoping to have a potable water system very soon.

“We are very conscious of all the problems in the community Quebrada
Honda, above all because in terms of health and sanitation it is
important for them, for all of the families that will be benefitted.
And we are very conscious; we are in the process of negotiation with
various partners to wait for the response that they might have to
support these types of projects.”

For the next December they hope to start this project.

“Now is the time for us to make a decision. We cannot continue
depending on the work of non governmental organizations like Agua para
el Pueblo who with their credibility receive financing from the
international community.

Maybe there is no national plan regarding the theme of water and
sanitation. Millions in resources are invested in payments to
privileged interest groups. But what exists in the investment of
potable drinking water? This must be a priority of the current
authorities and a theme in the agendas of the presidential candidates.

Honduras is in our hands. Let’s make it grow. Good night.”