Colomoncagua, Intibucá

One of the things I really like about Honduras is the place names. Plenty of important people in my life can't pronounce Tegucigalpa, and I'm not sure they plan on learning. And then I have to arrange a visit to Colomoncagua, a name not even my Spanish teacher was quite able to manage. The little town is going to have a seriously hard time getting up in the world, and its problems only start with the tricky name.

(it took me about ten minutes to write the paragraph above. I'm not sure why I'm more hungover than most Sundays, though I guess it has to do with the fact that I started drinking earlier than usual, and didn't stop until, my friend Emma tells me, I got into a cab at 5 this morning. Eurrrrlllgggghhhh.)

So on Monday myself and the office driver headed to Intibucá, to the town my German colleague had described as el culo del mundo - the backside of the world. And how. The last leg of the journey, from La Esperanza to Colomoncagua, was a distance of about 80 kilometres, and took us 3 and a half hours. The road, over and through the mountains, is unpaved, and the majority of the traffic you meet is equine, which makes sense since I imagine that a horse can travel faster than a 4x4 around there. I really need to start taking my camera out with me, and posting pictures on this blog. It was stunning.

In the 80s, the town used to host a camp for Salvadoran refugees, being on the edge of the border with El Salvador. Our accountant tells us that when she used to visit there, the road was worse - I don't believe her. It can't be any worse than not there.
Along the way, we gave a lot of people lifts who were standing on the side of the road. There's an organisational policy that we don't use the back of the pick-up for carrying people (my friend explained why one day when we were driving through the hills in the back of someone else's pick up: "if there's an accident, you die"), which I'd explain to them as they clambered up, opening the back door to their astonishment. Nice people, shy, quiet. Very poor.
The hills of Intibucá are squillions of miles from Tegucigalpa, literally and figuratively. It's a total wilderness, forests and dry choked rivers and birds of prey spinning overhead. Hot during the day and freezing at night. The small towns which string along the road for El Salvador all have electricity, but the water services are poor, and I have no idea at all how (or if) the kids get to school. Some of the houses have more holes than walls, and there are rags stuffed in the gaps where adobe blocks fell out. At 10AM, we pass a gang of men carrying shovels and machetes, their day's work in the fields finished now that the sun has become so strong.

Our driver Juan is new, over-qualified and keen to work in development. He's fantastic. And he's absolutely animated by the visit (he gets animated easily, which is one of his endearing traits). From here in the wilderness, our work makes more sense: you can sense the need, the objectives are palpable. And maybe attainable too. I think that what draws people to working in emergency contexts is sometimes the sense that where needs are extreme, almost anything you do has to improve conditions somewhat (not at all the case, but still); and that's how it felt out there in Colomoncagua. It's easier there to become angry, easier to feel robbed and deceived by a system that can't even clothe these people. Juan would like to dig his feet in and try to improve conditions right here. And we chat about development models, and empowering people to do things themselves; but on a personal level, I'm with him completely. It's a paradise. I'd quite like to stay too.

On Saturday, I went to a march against corruption in the capital, which was pleasant if a little toothless, then I played frisbee with 2 friends on a deserted running track. Now my nose is crispy with sunburn, of the kind I haven't got since the day I spontaneously travelled down the Rio Dulce on a yacht with Lucy. I'm ashamed and sore, and of all days to have lost my suncream, yesterday was not the day. That may also be contributing to the hangover that's made this entry take me 40 minutes to write.