Peter in Honduras

It’s raining. Really, really hard. Now, I’m pretty used to rain, being from Seattle and all, but this is spectacular. It’s got everything; sheet lightning, booming thunder, that lightning that just sort of creeps across the sky. It was so good I sat out on my front step for about 30 minutes just watching and listening. Unfortunately my laundry is still hanging up, but not drying at the moment.

A lot has been happening ever since I arrived in San Marcos, it’s all been a blur. I was lucky enough to arrive during the biggest fair of the year, where they crown the Reina de Café. So the last three nights there has been lots of music, festivities, venders, etc, which has provided a fun night life, although it’s hard to enjoy it when you feel like going to sleep at 9pm every night. Being in a new place is just tiring, you tend to spend a lot of energy during simple things, leaving very little left over for what you actually want to do.

Yesterday was my first day of “work” at Hermandad. I put work in quotes because I’m technically a volunteer, and it’s a very fine and politically interesting line between volunteer and employee, but I’ll come back to this later. Yesterday I spent most of the day meeting with different jefes of the various programs at Hermandad. The most interesting meeting came at the end of the day, when I met with Mauricio Roderno who is the head of the microfinance department. This guy is really cool. He speaks fluent English which makes his Spanish much easier to understand, especially because he speaks slowly and clearly and translates idioms and business jargon. He asked me if I would be interested in helping him with a project that he has wanted to do for some time, a project he thought would be ganar-ganar for both of us (remember the volunteer-employee line? He was really trying to sell me on the project, the whole time I’m thinking “I will do whatever this man tells me to do.”). I’ll break down the basics really quickly:

            The microfinance department lends a lot of money to producers of café, which is a very important crop for Honduras. However, you’re probably thinking “funny, I don’t usually buy Honduran coffee; it’s usually from Guatemala or elsewhere…” That’s because Honduras doesn’t really have it all together when it comes to processing, marketing, and finally exporting. What Mauricio wants me to do is start with a survey of the coffee producers here in Western Honduras. The end goal is to help them achieve a better quality product and find access to a better market. Too often in Honduras the middleman, or coyote, is able to take advantage of the farmer because of lack of information. They’ll buy the beans from the farmer who doesn’t have the technology to dry them enough, process them further, and sell them for much more than the farmer received.

Ok, so are you thinking the same thing I am? “Peter doesn’t know anything about coffee, in fact, I don’t even think he drinks the stuff.” Well, if it’s not blended with ice, you’re probably right. But oh man, am I going to learn. Don Mauricio just so happens to be a socio in Marquense, the towering café-refining plant in town. When he offered me this project he said he could promise me one thing: “You are going to learn everything there is to know about the process of café.” So that’s the first project I’m going to start on in the coming months, among others. A few other areas we’ve already discussed are:

• Working with PACTA, an organization that gives aid to farmers to buy land, and then helps them develop the land, design business plans, and helps them manage the investment.
• Working with Cajas Rurales (community banks), helping form new groups, providing support and training to existing banks. This is something I’m very interested in because it means working really closely with people out in the campo, in much poorer areas.
• Administrative support at Hermandad. They’ve got some issues as an institution, and while this isn’t exactly directly helping Hondurans, it may be politically necessary that I spend some time in this area.

So that’s the four projects I’ve got going on already with Hermandad, which is plenty for right now, because I’d also like to branch out to other organizations and find projects of my own accord. But as a start, it’s very helpful to have an organization like Hermandad because it offers a great jumping off point to my service as well as the resources to accomplish my projects. What more can I say, I'm psyched!