Para Clara

So Clare emails to point out that here I am in the middle of the tropics, rainforests and cloudforests and Pacific and Carribean coasts, and I'm blurting on about people and fast food joints and not a word about the biodiversity that surrounds me. Good point. And, being the type who responds to feedback, this entry will be devoted to the non-human life in Honduras. It's apparent anyway that the well-being of Honduran human beings is intricately linked to that of the non-humans, so the comment didn't come a moment too soon.

From a day-to-day perspective, the only animal life I'm familiar with is the small, buzzing kind, and I have welt-covered limbs to prove it. Our house is a mosquito trap, and home also to an immense population of tiny ants which endlessly swarm over the oven and work surfaces in the kitchen. It's upsetting when you find them in your cereal, but you learn quickly not to buy the sweet cereals. Behind the oven, and occasionally elsewhere, are the geckos, cute and fast, but from time to time quite startling, when they fall out of the press intended for teabags (and not for small fast lizards). There are large flying green things called chinchas, which can apparently result in miserable deaths, and outside the gates, at night, large low-flying bats. For those who remember the Casa, I stress that I have no reason to believe that these are vampire bats.
Our neighbourhood, as I've mentioned, is a well-off one, and household animals are kept indoors at all times. In the city centre you see the stray dogs and cats, but not near us. Last weekend, a gang of us spent the night up in the national park near the city, which is covered in (far from pristine) cloud forest, and we went on a hike to a really impressive cascade. No signs of animal life that I could discern apart from the occasional bird call: maybe this is my clunky landlubber lack of observation skills, or perhaps it's like the guide books say, and the natural heritage of the park was largely chased away before it was ever given protected status. It's very close to the city, and we daytrippers and picnickers aren't exactly sensitive.

So much for the fauna. The flora picture should be better. From my office window I look out on an enormous banana plant (row on row of green banana forming under its leaves), a lemon tree and a mango tree. Some of the office staff go out with a sweeping brush to gather enough lemons for lemonade. And the city is surrounded by mountains, which at the moment are green and curly, almost like the hills around Barcelona; my colleagues tell me they go a burnt yellow by April.

In fact, the environmental tale in Honduras is a sad and distressing one, the more so when you consider the richness it should represent. Yesterday, I visited an organisation we support which mobilises the locals in the province of Olancho around environmental justice. Reading the project summary in the office, it seemed to me a little notional: why would people who have virtually no livelihood dedicate time to advocacy for the rights of trees? Of course, the two things are connected (everything is connected)...
The hills of Olancho (and the province is all hills) are bare, or at best coated in thin grasses and a species of pine (I think) with narrow trunks and sparse foliage. Mahogany is native to these hills; our partner organisations tell us that mahogany can be expected to be extinct from here within 10 years if it's not protected. Large roads cut across the landscape, built to facilitate the stream of trucks that travel up empty and back towards Tegus loaded with logs. Logging warehouses are visible all along the road.
Honduras has laws against illegal logging, but Honduras has lots of laws, a very good legal framework, and its the implementation that's lacking. The loggers form a powerful business interest, and a powerful political lobby; in fact, they're just plain powerful, a fact that's very real when you're confronted by their agents on your land, and they have a shotgun while all you have is a machete. Our partner organisation told us that 5 of their members had been killed by loggers this year. By members, I mean rural peasants, with tiny patches of land, a couple of chickens maybe, who join the organisation to try to confront the loggers.
The organisation really impressed me: it works with local people helping them to define their problems and their ideal solutions, and it also works at the level of government and congress, refining the law to shut down the loopholes, and demanding its full, transparent enforcement.
I don't have the full facts about the situation (having had the trip somewhat sprung on me) - so I'll point you to this global witness report which I haven't yet read.
It was a funny day for me (and after all, this blog is first and foremost about me, and you wouldn't be reading it if you didn't know me, so forgive the self-indulgence). Inspiring to see 30 campesinos in a small church hall, some having walked hours to be there, poring over the new forestry law to extract the most pertinent information to their livelihoods. Inspiring too to talk to articulate community leaders who had brought the entire congressional committee on forestry out to their pueblo to extract a commitment to implement the new law. But driving home, looking at the bare mountainsides, I was tempted to ask my more knowledgeable colleague whether it wasn't too late already.

There you go Clare: a Carol's-eye view of the environmental story in Honduras. Can I just say this to any of you who are reading: You would love it here. I'm talking in particular about you, Clare, Lucy, Emmeline, Spanish speakers and fighters and idealists. Oh yes, and you Seoidin. I hope you can visit me, because the situation is horrible, but people are fighting, and that really is inspiring.

Email me! (Sorry I haven't emailed you)

Hasta la proxima