Occidentalism

My final weeks in Honduras have been characterised by a satisfying symmetry, clean repetitions of things I did in my initial weeks in Honduras. For example, both my first and last weekends here (and no occasions in between) saw me at a big happy ex pat dinner in a Finnish friend's beautiful apartment. My first glimpse of Honduras, 6 years ago, was crossing from Guatemala to Copán Ruinas and from there hitching across the west of the country towards El Salvador. I've always had a soft spot for that western chunk, so it was especially fitting that my last full week in Honduras was spent in Santa Rosa de Copán and environs.

This is the centre of popular protest in Honduras, the poorest part of the country and the angriest. Our partner organisations have received death threats, are regularly intimidated for protesting against the contracts that go to foreign companies for large scale exploitation of Honduras' gold reserves, among other things. "Tomas de carreteras" - road seizures - are as regular as teachers' strikes, power cuts or dengue outbreaks here. In the west, central government is less important than local government; and people have learned to express their needs in a way that gets the attention of policy makers. But the challenge is greater here than perhaps anywhere else in the country; the needs, the poverty, the inequality.

It looks a bit like Ireland, only more so: hillier, cliffier, greener, foggier. On Tuesday afternoon, I arrived to a meeting in the back of beyond, where four men in white cowboy hats awaited me, their clothes filthy from the fields. It's cold, damp - "fresh" they call it - and the houses that crouch at the sides of the treacherous roads are made more of holes than of mud and twigs. (Do I fetishise poverty? I fear, in trying to visibilise it, I do). How can you possibly square this, gold mines alongside shivering poverty, potato famine poverty? But the scenery in its drama and changing light is quite possibly the most beautiful of all of Honduras.

This was my last field trip. I met 30 teenagers organising to advocate for the needs of young people in their communities, staggeringly articulate and enthusiastic. I met some sleepy women, being organised into a network whose purpose, I felt, they didn't quite understand. And some campesinos who are training their peers to monitor government spending. In general, if the government isn't spending money on agriculture, they figure it's wasting its time. The beautiful thing about this random mixture of groups was that they all talked to each other. Each of them knew about the other, and collaborated in one way or another with all the other groups in their vicinity. All those old chestnuts that I've been looking for: solidarity, mobilisation, anger even. Here in the west, there were glimpses of those things.

It's been a long year of watching organisations bicker and engage in power struggles. Am I sorry it's over? Emphatically no. And emphatically yes. No, because those struggles have exhausted and confused me. And yes because I'm only beginning to see where they're going, and how they might just get there.

Reading this blog, I know I've never made it clear how big a deal these tiny impossible initiatives are. In the time I've been here, 4 members of organisations we support have been killed; many many more have been threatened and intimidated. And what I've learned this year is that, even when you're life's at risk, you still have to do the accounts, pay the secretary, handle your board of directors. And even when you're a martyr, you still might be lousy at all these things. Defending human rights is trabajo de hormiga; ant's work, slow and tedious when you get down to the details, but nevertheless thrilling and amazing.

It's the weekend and my time is divided equally between office (panic) bedroom (panic-packing) and a variety of hostelries (panic denial). I leave on Wednesday morning, and the aircraft spits me into chilly Dublin on Thursday afternoon. I'll be honest folks: I can't wait. I hope to see you all there or there around, some time soon.

In the meantime, there's sure to be some valedictory stock taking style post here over the course of the next couple of days.