I'm thinking about decommissioning this blog. I don't use it often enough and don't really have anything interesting to say. And, perhaps more pertinently, I have a feeling that web 2.0 is over.
My own relationship with the www has always been closely related to my residence, and works roughly like this: live in Dublin, don't use the web that much; live outside of Dublin, become one of those net cafe rats, scribbling away on strange keyboards at unsociable hours, upside down exclamation marks and circumflexes all over the place. I haven't developed any lifetime habits: when I was in Central America and experiencing new things every day - and furthermore when I had hundreds of people to stay in touch with and a limited amount of time to write - all of this turned me into a committed blogger. But once I zipped back into the same timezone as my friends, well, what was the point? I've blogged I think 5 times since coming home.
I think that's how blogging works, a bit. Some people get it, and keep it (big shout out to Shazzle); the rest of us peter out once we realise that we have not a lot to say.
But there did seem to be a frenzy of interactivity last summer - if you'll forgive me for coming over all nostalgic about what was in effect the day before yesterday -and it pivoted around Facebook. Facebook is over now, and without it, I seem to have lost all the other elements of web 2.0 that interested me.
Round about last Christmas, we all got very exercised about the things we lefties get exercised about. That Guardian article about the evil owners of Facebook got posted on every blog and homepage around. The cynics looked smug, and said they'd never trusted it anyway, were glad they'd never signed up. And people sloped off, a little embarrassed, leaving their undeletable profiles in the ether, never to be updated, never to be erased. Facebook was bad because it was invasive, another consumer machine, eating up your personal details and procesing them to sell you Givenchy fragrance. It was bad because shadowy corporate types were making money out of what was supposed to be a pure virtual space. Slowly, we also twigged that it was bad because there was no place to hide from friends we didn't want and reunions we hadn't invited.
Now Facebook is just a shell. The only people who go there are Americans and the friends I accepted most grudgingly, or in greatest confusion. Nobody sends me messages any more. My notifications are almost exclusively of the "Sarty Jenna-Bowman is friends with Josie Dinger-Chuncha" variety. The others are those darn applications where you spend 3 minutes doing a brain dead quiz only to discover that you have to invite 20 other people to do it to get the results. So you invite the people you see least on your friends list, or the ones whose judgement would least upset you. I get about 4 of those a week still.
So Facebook is shit. Fine. But I want to mourn it just a little. I loved catching up with all those old people, and welcoming them back into my universe (Nicole Nascenzi! Hugh Delany! Eoin Ward!). On dull nights in Tegus, on my own in a huge house, I loved hanging out in this laid back place, reading snippets of articles from my friends, looking at people's photos. Once we had established our profiles and put up our photos, far away people were near enough to chat - and never before or since I was a regular Facebook user did I use my gmail chat so much.
The only reason that Facebook is shit is because nobody goes there anymore. And everybody left for very good, pure, moral reasons. But in the frenzy of Facebook-condemnation, I think we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. I liked social networking. I liked status updates, photo albums, notes and events. I organised my coming home party through Facebook, and it was a riot.
Now nobody emails me any more, I don't blog, and I haven't posted photos anywhere in months. My last status update was "Carol storms out of Facebook in a huff". Trouble is, now I don't know where to go.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Civic spirit
Leaving the house to go for a walk, we noticed the North African man from the house opposite dropping his rubbish on the derelict corner. This is the accepted place to dump waste if you're too stingy (or principled) to pay the bin charges.
Tut tut, I thought. Somebody should do something about that.
As he strolled past us, slowly, casually, I smiled and said Good evening. "Good to show him we're friends first", I rationalised to Simp. "Next time, we'll be able to tell him what he should do with his bins".
We walked on. Within seconds, a neighbour was out giving the man hell, yelling at him: "Pick that up! Get rid of it! GET rid of it!". The self-righteous neighbour was being a bully and an oaf, but he did have a point. The North African man slinked away towards his house.
We should drop a note into his house, rationalised Simp. Let him know the procedures. He probably doesn't know.
Two minutes later, we glanced behind us to see the man at the exit to our road, carrying his black sack with him. So we introduced ourselves.
"You need to get tags for those you see," we told him. "They won't pick them up until Thursday."
"I know, I'm going to buy tags now." He pointed at the Centra.
"No, but you can't leave it out tonight. They won't collect it till Thursday."
"Oh. Oh I see."
"Yes - and you can use green bags for recycling - for paper, and cans."
"And they pick the recycling up every second Friday".
We were on a roll. Falling over ourselves with civic responsibility and helpfulness and neighbourliness.
"But you shouldn't leave that out now or that man will shout at you again."
"Ok. I'll bring it back to my house now. Thank you."
We walked off grinning at how much better it is when you communicate with the neighbours. The man heaved the black sack over a fence and hurled it into the derelict yard at the end of the road.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Experimenting with Pyjamas
I know, I know, but let's just not mention it, ok? Thanks.
Yesterday morning, hungover and broken, I was appointed to buy butter for the household - consisting of myself, Simp, and our Corkonian friend Lucy. Lucy and I decided this was our moment to try a local practise, and went to the shops in our pyjamas. In general when wandering the neighbourhood in the daytime, it's usual to meet small knots of women, sometimes (though by no means always) with prams in tow, at least one of whom is kitted out in pyjamas, slippers and puffa jacket. Lucy wasn't familiar with the trend, but was very definitely intrigued.
I'm sorry I don't have a photo, because we looked quite splendind in our winter coats and snuggly hoodies, with flimsy Betty Boop pyjama bottoms on. Lucy even had slippers to complete the look. There were a couple of giveaways though, most significantly my Converse and Lucy's heavy plastic designer glasses. And that was it. We knew we were frauds, and everyone else knew it too.
It was all a bit hair raising in the end. Emerging blinking from the alleyway onto Cork St at midday on a Saturday afternoon, I realised for the first time the extent to which this really is the city centre, and struggled with the near-certainty that I was about to run into my Leaving Cert geography teacher, or my boss (I wasn't, and didn't). But much more worrying was the knowledge that I was not a native pyjama-wearer, that everyone could see that I had never worn my pyjamas to the shops before, and god help us all, any genuine pyjama-wearers were likely to think we were taking the piss. Which we most definitely weren't. We just felt it was time to experiment with the nightwear-as-outdoor-wear trend.
I won't be doing it again. My legs were cold. I had no glasses on, so I squinted (threateningly?) at everyone I passed. And Lucy got no reassurance that she was part of a community: that morning, we were the only people we saw out and about in their pyjamas.
Yesterday morning, hungover and broken, I was appointed to buy butter for the household - consisting of myself, Simp, and our Corkonian friend Lucy. Lucy and I decided this was our moment to try a local practise, and went to the shops in our pyjamas. In general when wandering the neighbourhood in the daytime, it's usual to meet small knots of women, sometimes (though by no means always) with prams in tow, at least one of whom is kitted out in pyjamas, slippers and puffa jacket. Lucy wasn't familiar with the trend, but was very definitely intrigued.
I'm sorry I don't have a photo, because we looked quite splendind in our winter coats and snuggly hoodies, with flimsy Betty Boop pyjama bottoms on. Lucy even had slippers to complete the look. There were a couple of giveaways though, most significantly my Converse and Lucy's heavy plastic designer glasses. And that was it. We knew we were frauds, and everyone else knew it too.
It was all a bit hair raising in the end. Emerging blinking from the alleyway onto Cork St at midday on a Saturday afternoon, I realised for the first time the extent to which this really is the city centre, and struggled with the near-certainty that I was about to run into my Leaving Cert geography teacher, or my boss (I wasn't, and didn't). But much more worrying was the knowledge that I was not a native pyjama-wearer, that everyone could see that I had never worn my pyjamas to the shops before, and god help us all, any genuine pyjama-wearers were likely to think we were taking the piss. Which we most definitely weren't. We just felt it was time to experiment with the nightwear-as-outdoor-wear trend.
I won't be doing it again. My legs were cold. I had no glasses on, so I squinted (threateningly?) at everyone I passed. And Lucy got no reassurance that she was part of a community: that morning, we were the only people we saw out and about in their pyjamas.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
I had forgotten
... that constant stress-pain in your upper back that comes from hunching against the cold. I haven't had that for a year. But it's soon to be constant again.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
LCD Soundsystem made me cry
People talk a lot about the reverse culture shock we supposedly get when returning from "the developing world". I think I'm supposed to feel offended by the affluence, horrified by the decadence of western lifestyles. I'm supposed to be pining for the real people, the simple people of the majority world. But you know, I've been living in a big ol run down city where frankly the decadence and affluence are much more conspicuous, for their juxtaposition with grinding poverty, and where they've visible in a surreal out-of-context way: runaway consumption without development. Maybe that's Ireland too a little. But not as much.
What does throw me though? Little things. Taxi fares being non-negotiable, that's a tricky one. I miss dramatic passenger door negotiations, the argument between ascending petrol prices and blatant exploitation of the foreigner. The slightly outrageous luxury of flushing toilet paper. The bewildering array of options - shops, restaraunts, pubs, people I know, gigs, events, things to do. Newspapers!
No, these aren't the things that throw me - they're the things I love, and in ways the reasons I came home. But being away does give you a fresh perspective on your reality. I notice people begging a lot more now. In ways, that sort of indigence is much more disturbing in Ireland, mostly because it's almost invariably linked with substance abuse. And it's genuinely shocking to see the zombie junkies careen across busy roads and through the indifferent shoppers. I feel less threatened by poor Honduran people than by poor Irish people. Is that why we get into this whole game? The cuddly face of poverty?
The filth of Dublin shocks me too. After a year of lecturing Hondurans about learning to manage their waste, I realise that we're as bad. Perhaps you don't regularly see chicken bones and coke cans flung out the back of a CIE bus as it whizzes through Kinnegad; but there's a lot more shattered glass here - and I never once saw a pool of vomit on the streets of Tegucigalpa. I went along to a Green Party meeting about waste management a week ago; but it was such a mess of uninformed opinions fired at a perfectly well informed John Gormley that I left early, bored. I'm allowed do this when my organisation isn't paying for the meeting.
Last night, I went to see LCD Soundsystem in Tripod, the new venue where the Red Box used to be. The gig was spectacular. The crowd were a shower of coked-up arrogant pricks. At the end, during a lovely encore of New York I Love You, I felt my usual overwhelming sense of communion with my fellow gig goers (I'm easily moved to ecstasy-like levels of fellow feeling), and bless us all, I started to cry. I'm not sure why this was. It could be a) the sentimentality of the song; b) the fact that this was exactly the moment I'd been longing for over the last year; or c) the horrible superficiality of it all, the knowledge that all these rapt people waving their hands and calling out can be engaged by drugs and flashing lights but never by politics or beliefs.
Nah. Not superficiality. I loved every single second of it.
It took 30 minutes to get my coat from the cloakroom and simp was nearly beaten up in the process. But it was worth it.
What does throw me though? Little things. Taxi fares being non-negotiable, that's a tricky one. I miss dramatic passenger door negotiations, the argument between ascending petrol prices and blatant exploitation of the foreigner. The slightly outrageous luxury of flushing toilet paper. The bewildering array of options - shops, restaraunts, pubs, people I know, gigs, events, things to do. Newspapers!
No, these aren't the things that throw me - they're the things I love, and in ways the reasons I came home. But being away does give you a fresh perspective on your reality. I notice people begging a lot more now. In ways, that sort of indigence is much more disturbing in Ireland, mostly because it's almost invariably linked with substance abuse. And it's genuinely shocking to see the zombie junkies careen across busy roads and through the indifferent shoppers. I feel less threatened by poor Honduran people than by poor Irish people. Is that why we get into this whole game? The cuddly face of poverty?
The filth of Dublin shocks me too. After a year of lecturing Hondurans about learning to manage their waste, I realise that we're as bad. Perhaps you don't regularly see chicken bones and coke cans flung out the back of a CIE bus as it whizzes through Kinnegad; but there's a lot more shattered glass here - and I never once saw a pool of vomit on the streets of Tegucigalpa. I went along to a Green Party meeting about waste management a week ago; but it was such a mess of uninformed opinions fired at a perfectly well informed John Gormley that I left early, bored. I'm allowed do this when my organisation isn't paying for the meeting.
Last night, I went to see LCD Soundsystem in Tripod, the new venue where the Red Box used to be. The gig was spectacular. The crowd were a shower of coked-up arrogant pricks. At the end, during a lovely encore of New York I Love You, I felt my usual overwhelming sense of communion with my fellow gig goers (I'm easily moved to ecstasy-like levels of fellow feeling), and bless us all, I started to cry. I'm not sure why this was. It could be a) the sentimentality of the song; b) the fact that this was exactly the moment I'd been longing for over the last year; or c) the horrible superficiality of it all, the knowledge that all these rapt people waving their hands and calling out can be engaged by drugs and flashing lights but never by politics or beliefs.
Nah. Not superficiality. I loved every single second of it.
It took 30 minutes to get my coat from the cloakroom and simp was nearly beaten up in the process. But it was worth it.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Back
Simp just said to me:
"Listen to you Carol, you're like Rip Van Winkle. "Look at all these yuppies!" Who are all those new people in the Jimmy Cake? I've never heard of him - who's he?!"
Sigh. You go away for a year....
"Listen to you Carol, you're like Rip Van Winkle. "Look at all these yuppies!" Who are all those new people in the Jimmy Cake? I've never heard of him - who's he?!"
Sigh. You go away for a year....
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Home
This is all a bit of a mess. Here's a rambly post I started writing a week ago and never finished. Rather than try to make sense of it, I'll just throw it up in all its glorious incoherence....
Well I can't tell you how mad it is to be home. Ever perceptive, Walt said, "I won't ask you how it feels because I'm sure it feels like all sorts of things at once". And he's right. Now, for instance, it feels like a crashing hangover.
But I have to confess, over the last year there were so many times when I missed Dublin physically, in a small, unidentifiable way. I identified it coming from the airport last Thursday afternoon, the cheery, autumnal outsideness to everything. So many people on the streets! Kids in school uniforms, couples, hundreds of people on bikes. And people at bus stops, pasty people, ugly people, Irish people damn it, it was just beautiful! The light here - I know I go on about the light, but really, hear me out - the light is incredible. I drank wine with Eoin last night outside the IFSC, and it took the sky 2 hours to go from glowing pale blue to a velvet navy - they say that Ireland is green, but it's not really, not compared to Honduras. But it's certainly blue. I'm loving those big cartoony blue skies, the sky equivalent of the Caribbean sea, which so perfectly set off the red bricks on the South Circular Road. The things I've missed. And how I've missed them.
My body responds to change slowly and forgetfully. I still expect to wake up in Tegucigalpa. In my heart of hearts, I never really left Dublin. But I never really came back either. One day I'll wake up and realise I'm not going back, but not just yet. Does having left make them all less real, my friends there - do they keep existing? None of us are good at email, and there are very few that I'll see again in Europe. I have one friend in particular, a Nicaraguan who travels a lot in her work, but never to Europe; and as I packed my bags and skyped simp every other day, counting the hours until I'd be home, I felt more strongly than ever the inequality between us. We talk about meeting up in Columbia to visit a mutual friend who's moving there, but I know she won't. She's sending money home to her family, dollar bills slipped into the pockets of friends when they travel back, so she doesn't have to give a penny to the Western Union. No way she could drop $1000 on a holiday to South America. But maybe we can organise a conference for her, as a pretext....
Well I can't tell you how mad it is to be home. Ever perceptive, Walt said, "I won't ask you how it feels because I'm sure it feels like all sorts of things at once". And he's right. Now, for instance, it feels like a crashing hangover.
But I have to confess, over the last year there were so many times when I missed Dublin physically, in a small, unidentifiable way. I identified it coming from the airport last Thursday afternoon, the cheery, autumnal outsideness to everything. So many people on the streets! Kids in school uniforms, couples, hundreds of people on bikes. And people at bus stops, pasty people, ugly people, Irish people damn it, it was just beautiful! The light here - I know I go on about the light, but really, hear me out - the light is incredible. I drank wine with Eoin last night outside the IFSC, and it took the sky 2 hours to go from glowing pale blue to a velvet navy - they say that Ireland is green, but it's not really, not compared to Honduras. But it's certainly blue. I'm loving those big cartoony blue skies, the sky equivalent of the Caribbean sea, which so perfectly set off the red bricks on the South Circular Road. The things I've missed. And how I've missed them.
My body responds to change slowly and forgetfully. I still expect to wake up in Tegucigalpa. In my heart of hearts, I never really left Dublin. But I never really came back either. One day I'll wake up and realise I'm not going back, but not just yet. Does having left make them all less real, my friends there - do they keep existing? None of us are good at email, and there are very few that I'll see again in Europe. I have one friend in particular, a Nicaraguan who travels a lot in her work, but never to Europe; and as I packed my bags and skyped simp every other day, counting the hours until I'd be home, I felt more strongly than ever the inequality between us. We talk about meeting up in Columbia to visit a mutual friend who's moving there, but I know she won't. She's sending money home to her family, dollar bills slipped into the pockets of friends when they travel back, so she doesn't have to give a penny to the Western Union. No way she could drop $1000 on a holiday to South America. But maybe we can organise a conference for her, as a pretext....
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Last post from Honduras
So goodbye to Glens and Sabor Cubano, drunk Spanish people I don't really know (though there's plenty of those in Dublin).
Goodbye to 100 year old taxis rattling at breakneck speed up the Bulevard Morazan.
Goodbye to 4 year, 7 year, 50 year rum: Flor de Caña, I salute you.
Goodbye to road seizures, school closures; an entire civil service made up of the president's (sadly not very bright) cronies.
Goodbye to endless political gossip.
Goodbye to kind, happy people who just want to make an honest buck
and male chauvinist pigs who hiss at you in the street and leer at you in close confines
and endless conversations about feminism, struggle, and revolution!
And wondering whether the revolution will ever take off. When it does, I'll be on the next plane back. Today is the day of the soldier: I was woken at 6AM by something that sounded like canon fire. Yesterday, the government announced that it wouldn't be a national holiday after all, so everyone could just tell their mothers they wouldn't be going home and report for work as usual.
Goodbye to speculation about whether national holidays will be official or not.
Goodbye hotel Maya, home of the most welcoming swimming pool and loveliest view.
Goodbye Comayagua, spiritual home of the longest, most boring, most travelled and most accident-prone road in Honduras.
Goodbye Bambu, goodbye Regatón. Just 2 CDs will have to sustain me from now on.
Goodbye long distance relationship.
And close friends here.
And Spanish, and thinking, and rich conversations in the office.
I'm coming home.
Goodbye to 100 year old taxis rattling at breakneck speed up the Bulevard Morazan.
Goodbye to 4 year, 7 year, 50 year rum: Flor de Caña, I salute you.
Goodbye to road seizures, school closures; an entire civil service made up of the president's (sadly not very bright) cronies.
Goodbye to endless political gossip.
Goodbye to kind, happy people who just want to make an honest buck
and male chauvinist pigs who hiss at you in the street and leer at you in close confines
and endless conversations about feminism, struggle, and revolution!
And wondering whether the revolution will ever take off. When it does, I'll be on the next plane back. Today is the day of the soldier: I was woken at 6AM by something that sounded like canon fire. Yesterday, the government announced that it wouldn't be a national holiday after all, so everyone could just tell their mothers they wouldn't be going home and report for work as usual.
Goodbye to speculation about whether national holidays will be official or not.
Goodbye hotel Maya, home of the most welcoming swimming pool and loveliest view.
Goodbye Comayagua, spiritual home of the longest, most boring, most travelled and most accident-prone road in Honduras.
Goodbye Bambu, goodbye Regatón. Just 2 CDs will have to sustain me from now on.
Goodbye long distance relationship.
And close friends here.
And Spanish, and thinking, and rich conversations in the office.
I'm coming home.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Tipsy
I am tipsy.
It is raining outside.
It is cold outside.
It is 10.30 at night, I had a delicious dinner of ceviche in Richard & Miwako's house, and now, somehow, I need to pack.
I have reached that inevitable moment in life planning where I decide - I can sleep on the plane.
I shall see some of you in Dublin. Others, I shall not see until I get back to Tegucigalpa. Besos muy fuertes a todos.
Hic.
It is raining outside.
It is cold outside.
It is 10.30 at night, I had a delicious dinner of ceviche in Richard & Miwako's house, and now, somehow, I need to pack.
I have reached that inevitable moment in life planning where I decide - I can sleep on the plane.
I shall see some of you in Dublin. Others, I shall not see until I get back to Tegucigalpa. Besos muy fuertes a todos.
Hic.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Talanga
Sorry about the last entry. Petulant I know. I'll try to be more grown up in future.
Today I went back to Talanga, whose transparency commission I visited in January, to see the participatory budgeting in action. I was, as I'm sure you can imagine, very excited.
It works like this: communities get together to agree what their single greatest priority is in order to combat the poverty that's endemic among them. After a presentation to local government, there's a public municipal assembly where collectively civil society and the county council agree which community projects will make it into the municipal investment plan for the year. Lovely? Lovely.
We arrive in the Lord Mayor's office at 9AM. It's your average pomp and ceremony: framed photograph of the fresh faced mayor at his inauguration; 5 full-sized flags of different Central American Republics (Honduras and the municipality of Talanga at the centre); giant desk to dwarf the Big Man, and more importantly his visitors; murals of native wildlife. In general, space isn't wanting in Honduras, and this is a large office in a large municipal building - nonetheless, some enterprising administrator has also stashed the municipality's supplies of plastic cups in brown boxes in the corner of the vast and otherwise intimidating room.
At the centre of the room is a big oval executive-style desk, with 10 executive chairs around it. Around the edges of the room are hard wooden benches. County counsellors sit around the fancy desk, poor people line the benches, waiting their turn. This is the flagship municipality in the whole country for citizen participation; still, the authorities are in a position to physically look down on their constituents.
Order of business. One, a long, rambling prayer. Two, the national anthem played from a laptop, scratchy sounds, but no matter: everybody belted out the tune. Even I felt proud to be Honduran. Next, the reading of the minutes from the last meeting. This took half an hour, in which I wrote a list of the people I expect to attend my going away party, and the woman beside me stitched away at Christmas decorations. After the reading of the minutes, there followed half an hour of bickering about the redaction of same; which words were appropriate and which weren't. "You said the mayor signed the declaration, whereas in fact he approved it."
Next up, the community representatives take turns to present their needs. Each one of them represents a a gathering of all the heads of family in their neighbourhood, and brandishes the signatures of the attendants (many are thumbprints) alongside their proposal, in a yellow paper folder. I find myself idly thinking that there's no stationary shop in Talanga, that we'll have financed all these yellow paper folders. Not to worry: yellow paper folders give people a certain sense of professional pride, of respectability.
One man presents his plan to train single mothers to make and decorate piñatas. I try to imagine the meeting in which an entire community decided that what would really rescue it from poverty is if all the women were qualified in a single skill - piñata making - for which they (as mothers) are the sole market. Christ. The majority of people are claiming for the costs of repairing the road (all are dirt roads) to their neighbourhood, improving the sanitation system or electrification.
It's all depressingly basic. People shouldn't have to choose between these projects: all of them are priorities (except for the piñatas). But what it does ensure is that at least these projects are executed in a more or less transparent fashion, and that the municipality has a certain responsibility to the poor. Which is, I repeat, depressingly basic.
At the other end of the scale, the national electricity provider is losing money hand over fist through mismanagement (after it collapsed earlier this year, the president handed control over to the army), and is wrapped up in nasty - and true - corruption charges and a union threatening to walk out. The impact is constant power cuts (the union sabre rattling), and - given that the rich are essentially exempt from paying electricity charges - rising electricity costs for the middle and lower classes. A captured state. In the pockets of its own monstrous institutions and the interests that control them.
Here we are trying to bridge the gaps. And me leaving just as things get interesting.
Today I went back to Talanga, whose transparency commission I visited in January, to see the participatory budgeting in action. I was, as I'm sure you can imagine, very excited.
It works like this: communities get together to agree what their single greatest priority is in order to combat the poverty that's endemic among them. After a presentation to local government, there's a public municipal assembly where collectively civil society and the county council agree which community projects will make it into the municipal investment plan for the year. Lovely? Lovely.
We arrive in the Lord Mayor's office at 9AM. It's your average pomp and ceremony: framed photograph of the fresh faced mayor at his inauguration; 5 full-sized flags of different Central American Republics (Honduras and the municipality of Talanga at the centre); giant desk to dwarf the Big Man, and more importantly his visitors; murals of native wildlife. In general, space isn't wanting in Honduras, and this is a large office in a large municipal building - nonetheless, some enterprising administrator has also stashed the municipality's supplies of plastic cups in brown boxes in the corner of the vast and otherwise intimidating room.
At the centre of the room is a big oval executive-style desk, with 10 executive chairs around it. Around the edges of the room are hard wooden benches. County counsellors sit around the fancy desk, poor people line the benches, waiting their turn. This is the flagship municipality in the whole country for citizen participation; still, the authorities are in a position to physically look down on their constituents.
Order of business. One, a long, rambling prayer. Two, the national anthem played from a laptop, scratchy sounds, but no matter: everybody belted out the tune. Even I felt proud to be Honduran. Next, the reading of the minutes from the last meeting. This took half an hour, in which I wrote a list of the people I expect to attend my going away party, and the woman beside me stitched away at Christmas decorations. After the reading of the minutes, there followed half an hour of bickering about the redaction of same; which words were appropriate and which weren't. "You said the mayor signed the declaration, whereas in fact he approved it."
Next up, the community representatives take turns to present their needs. Each one of them represents a a gathering of all the heads of family in their neighbourhood, and brandishes the signatures of the attendants (many are thumbprints) alongside their proposal, in a yellow paper folder. I find myself idly thinking that there's no stationary shop in Talanga, that we'll have financed all these yellow paper folders. Not to worry: yellow paper folders give people a certain sense of professional pride, of respectability.
One man presents his plan to train single mothers to make and decorate piñatas. I try to imagine the meeting in which an entire community decided that what would really rescue it from poverty is if all the women were qualified in a single skill - piñata making - for which they (as mothers) are the sole market. Christ. The majority of people are claiming for the costs of repairing the road (all are dirt roads) to their neighbourhood, improving the sanitation system or electrification.
It's all depressingly basic. People shouldn't have to choose between these projects: all of them are priorities (except for the piñatas). But what it does ensure is that at least these projects are executed in a more or less transparent fashion, and that the municipality has a certain responsibility to the poor. Which is, I repeat, depressingly basic.
At the other end of the scale, the national electricity provider is losing money hand over fist through mismanagement (after it collapsed earlier this year, the president handed control over to the army), and is wrapped up in nasty - and true - corruption charges and a union threatening to walk out. The impact is constant power cuts (the union sabre rattling), and - given that the rich are essentially exempt from paying electricity charges - rising electricity costs for the middle and lower classes. A captured state. In the pockets of its own monstrous institutions and the interests that control them.
Here we are trying to bridge the gaps. And me leaving just as things get interesting.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Wondering if anyone reads this anymore...
So I just thought I'd check.
Does anyone read this anymore? I'm going to stop blogging if you don't comment you know.
Walt, you're excused. Everybody else, you're not.
Does anyone read this anymore? I'm going to stop blogging if you don't comment you know.
Walt, you're excused. Everybody else, you're not.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Home economics
My refugees from Tocoa, back when it looked like they were going to be Tegus-bound for the rest of the week, decided to stock up on food. I came home from work on Tuesday, and they had cooked a vat of chicken curry, enough to feed about 20 people.
How to get rid of a pitcher of curry, without being driven to eating it 3 meals a day, plus snacks, for a week? I invited all my friends round on Friday evening for a leftovers party.
Since the beginning of time, we've had a lady who cleans the house twice a week (I'm naturally euphemistic, so it doesn't come easily to me to say cleaner. When I was 17 I used to refer to my then boyfriend as "the boy I'm going out with". I try to tell it like it is, but it's hard for me). In the absence of Lorna and Eva, there's not a huge amount of cleaning to do, and I can't really afford her on my own, but I'm a total woos, and haven't gotten round to letting her go yet. I hope I don't end up transferring Lempiras to her twice a month for the rest of my life. Anyway, in the absence of a whole lot to do, Amalia sometimes takes it into her head to do things like clean out the fridge.
So. I came home from work on Friday with beer and ice cream, and find the curry's been thrown out. I text my friends and say there's no meal, but there's crisps and beer and ice cream, and is that not dinner enough for anyone?
No it's not. My friends arrive with a "family meal" from the Chinese: 12 of us succeed in making a teenchy dent into the 4 immense cartons of greasy food they brought me.
So the process went like this:
Glut of food: invite friends round to clear fridge
Cleaner clears fridge, unbidden
Friends arrive and stuff fridge full of food I'm never going to eat.
Lordy. I'm really bad at this whole home economics thing.
How to get rid of a pitcher of curry, without being driven to eating it 3 meals a day, plus snacks, for a week? I invited all my friends round on Friday evening for a leftovers party.
Since the beginning of time, we've had a lady who cleans the house twice a week (I'm naturally euphemistic, so it doesn't come easily to me to say cleaner. When I was 17 I used to refer to my then boyfriend as "the boy I'm going out with". I try to tell it like it is, but it's hard for me). In the absence of Lorna and Eva, there's not a huge amount of cleaning to do, and I can't really afford her on my own, but I'm a total woos, and haven't gotten round to letting her go yet. I hope I don't end up transferring Lempiras to her twice a month for the rest of my life. Anyway, in the absence of a whole lot to do, Amalia sometimes takes it into her head to do things like clean out the fridge.
So. I came home from work on Friday with beer and ice cream, and find the curry's been thrown out. I text my friends and say there's no meal, but there's crisps and beer and ice cream, and is that not dinner enough for anyone?
No it's not. My friends arrive with a "family meal" from the Chinese: 12 of us succeed in making a teenchy dent into the 4 immense cartons of greasy food they brought me.
So the process went like this:
Glut of food: invite friends round to clear fridge
Cleaner clears fridge, unbidden
Friends arrive and stuff fridge full of food I'm never going to eat.
Lordy. I'm really bad at this whole home economics thing.
Taking stock
I have three weeks left in Honduras. A week ago I told my friend I was ready, antsy, like the last two months in secondary school, finished making the most of the place and feeling I had overstayed my welcome. A week ago I wanted to take the next plane home.
But that was the loneliness talking, and now I'm more used to living alone, I'm entering the inevitable not-wanting-to-leave stage. Since I know I'm not trapped here with no alternative prospects for the rest of my life, I have a better handle on the positive side of my life in Honduras.
I was miserable when I got here first. I didn't understand my job, I didn't understand the blurry politics that I was expected to analyse. I used to sit in meetings squinting, making a physical effort to make sense of the melee of gossip, bitching and key essential information, all in a Spanish that I could only just follow (when my colleagues would tell me I needed to "read between the lines"). Anything worth knowing isn't reported in the media, so trying to track the process of the government's poverty reduction strategy is a matter of coded conversations and listening at doors. My boss would flap into my office in the morning to update us on what she found out at a World Bank party the night before: I would surreptitiously take notes so that later I could try to unravel who all the names referred to, and what those slang Spanish words meant. I have never felt so lost or stupid in my life.
Over the course of the year, I've experienced a massive breach between my learning curve (dramatic) and what I was expected to know (twice as much as I ever did). So that in spite of killing myself, I never felt like I was half good enough.
So work was a struggle. And everything else that happened was framed by work. It's taken until now for work by itself to be a reason to stay on. Suddenly (and though I can't point to a moment of epiphany, it has been a sudden, and complete, reversal), I have a clarity about what we're at here, and instead of feeling confused and inept, I get excited when I visit organisations. I have thick, interesting conversations with my colleagues. I'm getting it. I'm beginning to get it.
And in 3 weeks I'm leaving.
So now I have the luxury of regretting, or at least feeling sad. I hadn't realised how much I had internalised Tegucigalpa, or how accustomed I'd become to this funny ex pat life. The 5 minute commute to work, the perfect climate, the never needing to think about what to wear. The closeness of our work life, an office fizzing with energy and politics in equal measure. Slow, sweet Honduran smiles. When you ask a Honduran how they are, they unfailingly reply "pues, aqui, saludandote": "well, here, saying hello to you". Or rather, they unfailingly say nothing. I'll miss our (almost) effortless bilingualism, I'll miss taxi drivers asking if I'm married, I'll miss the view up to el Picacho so much I think it will hurt. And the mountains and the pine trees, the highway from Tegus to San Pedro that I've trawled in countless buses and the ocassional pick up. Dancing with the girls from the office. Dancing with sleazy boys trying to grind against my leg. I'll miss the music - the awful, terrible repetitive music - so much. Truth be told, I probably have no idea how much I'll miss.
But none of this, honestly, compares with the prospect of living with simp again, and being a reasonable distance from my family. So I'll remain pleasantly tortured, which is what I am. I am so happy, so lucky, so blessed: I've had an amazing year here, and I got out of it a stronger relationship and a proper job that equals, at last, something approaching a career.
Off diving for the last time next weekend, but I'll keep plugging away at this from time to time, as interesting things occur. And I might see you in October.
But that was the loneliness talking, and now I'm more used to living alone, I'm entering the inevitable not-wanting-to-leave stage. Since I know I'm not trapped here with no alternative prospects for the rest of my life, I have a better handle on the positive side of my life in Honduras.
I was miserable when I got here first. I didn't understand my job, I didn't understand the blurry politics that I was expected to analyse. I used to sit in meetings squinting, making a physical effort to make sense of the melee of gossip, bitching and key essential information, all in a Spanish that I could only just follow (when my colleagues would tell me I needed to "read between the lines"). Anything worth knowing isn't reported in the media, so trying to track the process of the government's poverty reduction strategy is a matter of coded conversations and listening at doors. My boss would flap into my office in the morning to update us on what she found out at a World Bank party the night before: I would surreptitiously take notes so that later I could try to unravel who all the names referred to, and what those slang Spanish words meant. I have never felt so lost or stupid in my life.
Over the course of the year, I've experienced a massive breach between my learning curve (dramatic) and what I was expected to know (twice as much as I ever did). So that in spite of killing myself, I never felt like I was half good enough.
So work was a struggle. And everything else that happened was framed by work. It's taken until now for work by itself to be a reason to stay on. Suddenly (and though I can't point to a moment of epiphany, it has been a sudden, and complete, reversal), I have a clarity about what we're at here, and instead of feeling confused and inept, I get excited when I visit organisations. I have thick, interesting conversations with my colleagues. I'm getting it. I'm beginning to get it.
And in 3 weeks I'm leaving.
So now I have the luxury of regretting, or at least feeling sad. I hadn't realised how much I had internalised Tegucigalpa, or how accustomed I'd become to this funny ex pat life. The 5 minute commute to work, the perfect climate, the never needing to think about what to wear. The closeness of our work life, an office fizzing with energy and politics in equal measure. Slow, sweet Honduran smiles. When you ask a Honduran how they are, they unfailingly reply "pues, aqui, saludandote": "well, here, saying hello to you". Or rather, they unfailingly say nothing. I'll miss our (almost) effortless bilingualism, I'll miss taxi drivers asking if I'm married, I'll miss the view up to el Picacho so much I think it will hurt. And the mountains and the pine trees, the highway from Tegus to San Pedro that I've trawled in countless buses and the ocassional pick up. Dancing with the girls from the office. Dancing with sleazy boys trying to grind against my leg. I'll miss the music - the awful, terrible repetitive music - so much. Truth be told, I probably have no idea how much I'll miss.
But none of this, honestly, compares with the prospect of living with simp again, and being a reasonable distance from my family. So I'll remain pleasantly tortured, which is what I am. I am so happy, so lucky, so blessed: I've had an amazing year here, and I got out of it a stronger relationship and a proper job that equals, at last, something approaching a career.
Off diving for the last time next weekend, but I'll keep plugging away at this from time to time, as interesting things occur. And I might see you in October.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
The morning after
Seems a little soggy out, that's all. Tropical Depression Felix is wandering away from us without making an impact.
Richard of the water purification tablets warned me: "by the time Mitch hit Tegus it wasn't a hurricane anymore, that's what a lot of people don't understand. The status just refers to the wind speed. But it's the rains that killed people. But I didn't call to tell you about the Saffir Simpson scale: I called to see if you're ok." Bless.
One of my refugees just emerged: "what a scary hurricane, eh?" She's slightly disappointed. She lives in Tocoa (about which more another day), and she's like a kid in a candy shop when she comes up to Tegus: temperatures lower than 40 degrees, infrastructure, food shops with European delicacies.... Now there's nothing to stop her returning to the wild west.
Me, I must go to work.
Richard of the water purification tablets warned me: "by the time Mitch hit Tegus it wasn't a hurricane anymore, that's what a lot of people don't understand. The status just refers to the wind speed. But it's the rains that killed people. But I didn't call to tell you about the Saffir Simpson scale: I called to see if you're ok." Bless.
One of my refugees just emerged: "what a scary hurricane, eh?" She's slightly disappointed. She lives in Tocoa (about which more another day), and she's like a kid in a candy shop when she comes up to Tegus: temperatures lower than 40 degrees, infrastructure, food shops with European delicacies.... Now there's nothing to stop her returning to the wild west.
Me, I must go to work.
Waiting for the hurricane
The title was inevitable, however cheesy. But that's just what we're doing you see.
It's not raining yet. It's uncannily dry, in fact, the sky unthreatening. A marked contrast to the cars throwing themselves about the place in a desperate panic to get somewhere else. The sound of honking horns was constant today - a different tone of constant than usual.
Every computer I pass is open on the US disaster warning website here, tracking Hurricane Felix as he crawls across the isthmus. Last night, the hurricane made landfall on the Moskito Coast in Nicaragua. I texted my friend Richard, who works in disaster response, "do you think I need to be stocking up on supplies?" He phoned back. "Hi, I'm just getting on a military plane to the moskitia. You'll need water purification tablets and dry no-cook food in case the electricity goes. And if it's bad Carol, don't go to the office. If people are looting, the Bulevard Morazan is the ideal place to loot; you don't want to get caught up in anything nasty".
Last night, it was unclear whether the hurricane would come near Tegus. But the trajectory was certainly disturbingly close. For the last two days, we've watched the trajectory obsessively; natural disasters bring an intimacy with physical geography that no amount of preparatory study can match. By this morning, it had scraped down further south, closer and closer to the centre of the country where Tegucigalpa lies. The trajectory is nothing more than a hypothetical path, but in the absence of certainty, the scientists in Miami become the ultimate authorities of everything.
So I swung by the supermarket to get milk and ice cream, which I figured would pretty much get me through the worst. It was like Christmas Eve in Blackrock. The queues of trolleys went right to the back of the store, and it was fascinating to see what people thought they'd need in case of apocalypse: one man had a trolley full of nothing but sliced pan; another was carrying about 20 pints of milk. Mostly though, it's clean water. The supers are out of bottled water now, and the petrol stations out of gas.
By this afternoon, still no rain. It's raining in Danlí, in the south, and in all the cities the airports are closed. Everything's been cancelled. Today the schools were closed, and the government told all businesses to shut at midday. I'm housing two refugees from the north coast (a Spaniard and a Finn, not at all shabby or downtrodden) who can't get home until the thing passes. Quiet anticipation. A lot of stories about Mitch.
My plan had been, and remained, to have a goodbye lunch for a Danish colleague from another agency, with whom I've worked quite closely. There were 4 of us at lunch, sitting on the terrace waiting for the rain. The waitress took away our wine glasses and carefully poured our wine into coffee cups: it's illegal to sell alcohol when the city's under red alert. So we sipped our wine and the others shared their memories of Mitch. Hurricane Mitch is Year Zero in Honduras: all events ocurred before or after that watershed in 1998. They told stories of pick up trucks floating in rivers, babies fished out of holes, panic and confusion and abject devastation: even well-off people were completely cut off and forced to sleep wherever they lay, one colleague on the floor of a bank for two days. But the solidarity, the way that people pulled together and forgot their differences - and in Honduras, it's often the differences that define people - that was what was amazing.
The wind's picking up outside. But I think the force is gone out of the thing. Felix has been downgraded to a tropical storm. Here in the city, we should be relatively safe. Still. We're still waiting for the rain. During Mitch, they say, you couldn't open the door for the rain, the force and volume of it.
Are we better prepared now? Jesus god, we'd want to be, don't you think? Apparently so: now there are national contingency commissions, emergency plans; already people have been evacuated from high risk areas throughout the country. During Mitch, they say, everybody ran about hopelessly uncoordinated and confused. Tocoa was cut off for 9 months, only receiving food by air, twice a week, sacks of rice. I think of Tocoa now. Who am I to say - but I think things have improved. And there's no point in denying it: I find the whole thing incredibly exciting - and I know I'm not the only one. But I'm rich, and European, and the chances this thing could kill me are low. Not everyone's so lucky.
The storm is coming. Me and my refugees will be fine: we have whiskey and tea to get us through it all. I hope to god though it comes softly.
It's not raining yet. It's uncannily dry, in fact, the sky unthreatening. A marked contrast to the cars throwing themselves about the place in a desperate panic to get somewhere else. The sound of honking horns was constant today - a different tone of constant than usual.
Every computer I pass is open on the US disaster warning website here, tracking Hurricane Felix as he crawls across the isthmus. Last night, the hurricane made landfall on the Moskito Coast in Nicaragua. I texted my friend Richard, who works in disaster response, "do you think I need to be stocking up on supplies?" He phoned back. "Hi, I'm just getting on a military plane to the moskitia. You'll need water purification tablets and dry no-cook food in case the electricity goes. And if it's bad Carol, don't go to the office. If people are looting, the Bulevard Morazan is the ideal place to loot; you don't want to get caught up in anything nasty".
Last night, it was unclear whether the hurricane would come near Tegus. But the trajectory was certainly disturbingly close. For the last two days, we've watched the trajectory obsessively; natural disasters bring an intimacy with physical geography that no amount of preparatory study can match. By this morning, it had scraped down further south, closer and closer to the centre of the country where Tegucigalpa lies. The trajectory is nothing more than a hypothetical path, but in the absence of certainty, the scientists in Miami become the ultimate authorities of everything.
So I swung by the supermarket to get milk and ice cream, which I figured would pretty much get me through the worst. It was like Christmas Eve in Blackrock. The queues of trolleys went right to the back of the store, and it was fascinating to see what people thought they'd need in case of apocalypse: one man had a trolley full of nothing but sliced pan; another was carrying about 20 pints of milk. Mostly though, it's clean water. The supers are out of bottled water now, and the petrol stations out of gas.
By this afternoon, still no rain. It's raining in Danlí, in the south, and in all the cities the airports are closed. Everything's been cancelled. Today the schools were closed, and the government told all businesses to shut at midday. I'm housing two refugees from the north coast (a Spaniard and a Finn, not at all shabby or downtrodden) who can't get home until the thing passes. Quiet anticipation. A lot of stories about Mitch.
My plan had been, and remained, to have a goodbye lunch for a Danish colleague from another agency, with whom I've worked quite closely. There were 4 of us at lunch, sitting on the terrace waiting for the rain. The waitress took away our wine glasses and carefully poured our wine into coffee cups: it's illegal to sell alcohol when the city's under red alert. So we sipped our wine and the others shared their memories of Mitch. Hurricane Mitch is Year Zero in Honduras: all events ocurred before or after that watershed in 1998. They told stories of pick up trucks floating in rivers, babies fished out of holes, panic and confusion and abject devastation: even well-off people were completely cut off and forced to sleep wherever they lay, one colleague on the floor of a bank for two days. But the solidarity, the way that people pulled together and forgot their differences - and in Honduras, it's often the differences that define people - that was what was amazing.
The wind's picking up outside. But I think the force is gone out of the thing. Felix has been downgraded to a tropical storm. Here in the city, we should be relatively safe. Still. We're still waiting for the rain. During Mitch, they say, you couldn't open the door for the rain, the force and volume of it.
Are we better prepared now? Jesus god, we'd want to be, don't you think? Apparently so: now there are national contingency commissions, emergency plans; already people have been evacuated from high risk areas throughout the country. During Mitch, they say, everybody ran about hopelessly uncoordinated and confused. Tocoa was cut off for 9 months, only receiving food by air, twice a week, sacks of rice. I think of Tocoa now. Who am I to say - but I think things have improved. And there's no point in denying it: I find the whole thing incredibly exciting - and I know I'm not the only one. But I'm rich, and European, and the chances this thing could kill me are low. Not everyone's so lucky.
The storm is coming. Me and my refugees will be fine: we have whiskey and tea to get us through it all. I hope to god though it comes softly.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
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).
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).
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
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:
(If you, like me, are allergic to adding daft new applications, you can post a comment on my blog instead)
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.
- 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?
(If you, like me, are allergic to adding daft new applications, you can post a comment on my blog instead)
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