The Moskito Coast

I don't know where to start.

There will be no more photos. My camera was stolen. Don't worry: I'm unhurt, as is my sister - whose camera was also stolen. And, in fact, there is a bottomless source of photos on this very computer, so it's not strictly true that there are no more photos. Here, for example, is a photo of my 26th birthday:

No new photos though, and worst of all, no photos from the Moskito Coast, from which I returned very recently. (The theft occurred in La Ceiba, by the way; that the name of la moskitia not be sullied)

I should like to summarise the Moskito Coast in very few words, as I have a salsa class to be getting to. So here goes:
Abandoned, Carribbean, enormous-skied-and-clouded. We went crocodile spotting at night. In a dugout canoe, with flashlights, the air alive with heavy stupid flying things. Often biting things. Not the crocodiles though: they were tiny - caymans, actually - so I swam in their river fearlessly. But the Rio Platano: enormous. Seen from the air, it's a geographer's wet dream, all exaggerated meanders and ox-bow lakes. Gah! My photos! We went white water rafting in a dugout canoe, though only Olwyn was rowing (I'm a woos). The pech people chew a particular twig as a contraceptive: a different length depending on how many years you want to be childless. "Tinki pale" is moskito for "thank you very much". I saw so many toucans I lost count. We ended up on a beach, dancing with miskitos (the people, not the buzzy biting things) and singing and losing the run of ourselves. You could just imagine the arrival of the conquistadores.

My photos... I guess I might as well tell people I was hanging out with jaguars and millions of monkeys, since I can never prove otherwise. The monkeys is true. Not the jaguars, though we did see a print.

It was stunning. I hope it lasts. It's a beautiful place.

Right, I should go now: must shower before salsa. I shall try to update soon on trip to Tocoa, Hurricane Dean, and the joys of living alone (again).

Mojado

It's 7 in the evening, I'm just home from work, and I have a proposal to write before I get into work tomorrow morning. Judging by the very few blogs I read, this is prime-optimum-ideal time for me to update. So update I will.

I discovered today that the mother of one of my colleagues has gone mojada to the States. That is to say, travelled illegally by land from Honduras up through Guatemala and right up to the Mexican border, slipped over the border on a freight train, and then travelled by truck all the way to New Jersey. And she - Paulina's mum - is now in New Jersey with a bunch of people she knows, waiting for the recruitment agency for indocumentados to find her a job.

Before leaving, she - I don't know her name so let's call her Suyapa - she had to do a whole bunch of medical tests. The coyotes may be illegal people traffickers, but that's not to say for a second that they don't know how to run a business. Going mojado is a tricky business, involving at least 3 days walking across the desert, maybe as many as 12, and no promise of food or water beyond what you're carrying. So if your blood pressure is dodgy, or your heart isn't up to much, you can keep your $5,000, because who wants to run someone who's going to drop dead on them. Suyapa passed the tests, and made it to the States no problem. My boss, clearly impressed, commented that she must have had a very good coyote.

Jesus, the driver I mentioned a while back, made it in the end, on his third attempt. Deported twice, he refused to be beaten, and now he's washing dishes for a pittance in Houston. Is it Houston? I don't think so. I can't remember where he is. He arrived and the following day he had a job, lined up by his brother in law.

It's amazing being privy to these chats, everything casual and taken for granted, like we talk about our cousin in Australia. It's an insight into what so recently was reality for Irish people too, and what interests me is just that casualness. I used to think that migrants, or their families, must suffer shame; but not here, not at least if you succeed. It's such an absolutely standard escape route, and everybody talks about it openly, from the taxi drivers to work colleagues.

My boss told a story about visiting a migrants' refuge in Mexico last year, where many of the people have lost limbs. The train isn't for passengers, it doesn't stop, and noone is protected. People lying on the very roof of the carriage drop off to sleep with the slow chugging, fall, and never have the time to pull their leg away before the wheels cut through it.
Suyapa was pretty lucky to have found a good coyote.

Frustrations of the job

So in the end I decided not to move.

It came down to logistics, pathetically enough: the messyness of upping sticks and the expense of setting up in a new place, set against the delights of squirrels frolicking on the terrace. I'll always miss the squirrels I never had, but I can make the most of the giant butterfly/bat creatures, become their friends, maybe even learn to communicate.

I've been thinking lately about how, months and months ago, I stopped blogging about work. My hope with this blog had been to be a kind of citizen reporter, dispatching stories that you couldn't possibly imagine, from the heart of the struggle. Some of my frustrations over the last 10 months have centred around the nebulousness of the struggle, and the elusiveness of its heart. And around my inability to see what must be blindingly obvious to others. In this, as in all things, I'm impossibly agnostic.

My colleagues are excited about the changes that are coming to pass in Honduras. There's a growing movement of peasant farmers determined to fight CAFTA - the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The movement overlaps with another one of people demanding fair distribution of land. International NGOs - the policy driven ones, at least - are there, pushing, encouraging, training, funding: maybe this time, maybe here, the popular mandate can overcome the interest groups who the government has always protected/ been composed of.

But on the other hand, it's so thick, this political atmosphere, and I struggle to understand what's going on. Rivalries are intense. Organisations protect their information, their techniques, and most of all their bases. Civil society is like this everywhere, but to different extents. Here, the levels of suspicion and manipulation are intense, as is the extent of personal identification with a particular group.
Culturally, it's staggeringly difficult for me. Once, I spent three hours in a room with five board members of a local economic justice group, listening to them explain how a richer, more powerful group was infiltrating THEIR bases, and doing THEIR work, undermining them in the field. Enter the richer, more powerful group, who had, incidentally, informed me that the local organisation was corrupt and incompetent. Face to face, nobody would criticise anybody else. Nobody would even make masked reference to the problems. Invited to consider what difficulties they faced (as two organisations in the same region, with the same aims), nobody would hazard anything more challenging than a lack of resources.
This happens all the time. Organisational survival is more important than the larger aim (enabling the poor to participate, accessing productive land, fighting corruption). This year, I've spent a lot of time in dark offices with tight, angry campesinos; and not enough time on the streets doing battle with the economic powers.

I feel this is a post that deserves a counterpoint. But this morning I'm not worked up to give it. Local democracy, participatory democracy is slow, and very hard to catch as it emerges. Here are three men who can bring together 30 or 40 families in a community, sit them down with the mayor, and tell the mayor how THEY plan on spending municipal funds. The same men refuse to cooperate with the NGO working in the very same community with the same families. Possessiveness and suspicion. The models change, but politics never does. But look at them! Their families can barely read, they're hardly educated, and they're challenging the controlling forces of their society. And whatever I think of their methods, and their hopelessly closed, paranoid attitudes, these three men can mobilise hundreds of people, because those people believe in these men. (The women had left already when I chose to take the picture. They have an equal nunmber of female counterparts).

So I'm leaving soon, and I still haven't found the inspiring example I came here to find. But I do believe that's my fault, and not Honduras'. I'm looking in the wrong places, with the wrong expectations. I'm dedicating my last two months to looking harder, and better: lots of fieldtrips and conversations with real people.
Starting from Wednesday, I'll be out of contact for a little while: I'll update this when I can, but it may be a few weeks.

Let's get interactive

I need your help.

I've almost decided to move house. It would be fair to say that I'm about 80% decided, and on a good day even more. In the spirit of web 2.0, I've put a poll on my Facebook page, in order to facilitate me handing the decision over to someone else entirely. So I'd appreciate if you could all rush off, become my friend (if you're not already), and tell me what to do. Yippee!

I live in a very big house. Today I said goodbye for good to the last of my flatmates, so now it's just me, five bedrooms, four bathrooms and the giant moth-bat creatures in the patio. I feel pretty lost in this place, and I crave company. Besides which, all the taxi drivers in Tegucigalpa know where I live, and that I live alone. And I don't think that's a good thing.

So here's what I'll do. I'll make a list of pros for moving, then a list of cons, and then I'll make it so you can tell me what to do. I'll be expecting your dutiful feedback.

PROs:

• In my last 2 months in Tegus, I can shake things up and instead of moping around thinking how happy I was living with Lorna & Eva, I'll have my own place that I can make my own.
  
• This new flat has a terrace to die for. And a beautiful view over the city (which is surprisingly lovely, especially at night). And it's set among pine trees so squirrels scamper onto the terrace in the mornings, just like in... France or somewhere. It's in the city centre, but feels like it's in the countryside. I'm not exaggerating. The setting is divine.
  
• It's in a lovely neighbourhood called La Leona, which is where most of my friends live. I could meet them in the evenings and go for coffee. They could give me lifts to work. We could swap clothes, and magazines, and whine about the state of the world today, like real neighbours do. I have no friends living near me here....
  
• Really. You've no idea how much I've always wanted to live in La Leona.
  

CONs

• No internet. So at best I'll have to go to the hassle & expense of getting internet in.
  
• It's semi furnished, and has no bed... more hassle and expense (though who cares when I can be on the terrace with the squirrels?!)
• I have 8 weeks left in Tegucigalpa. Do I need to shake my life up this much, when I'm going to be stressed as hell and away on field trips half the time anyway?
• My enormous house for which I have very little affection has THE BEST SHOWER IN THE WORLD. This place has tepid water at best. It's a small bit.... dingy.
  
• My enormous house for which I have very little affection (MEHFWIHVLA) has cable tv. With a hundred channels. And I watch at least 4 of them from time to time.
  
• Mehfwihvla has a big, well stocked kitchen, a decent oven and a good-sized fridge. It's cosy. In as much as anywhere in Honduras is cosy (see previous post).
  
• Do I really want to pack and leave for just 8 weeks?

This is a big, difficult decision. Any ideas out there? Vote now on my Facebook page!

(If you, like me, are allergic to adding daft new applications, you can post a comment on my blog instead)