Peter in Honduras

To quickly reflect on my last post let me just say I was glad to see all the feedback and comments. I appreciated the anecdotes from your own lives and it’s good to have reinforced the notion that “this ain’t easy.”

And in truth, there have been positive developments! Xiomara and I organized a sales trip to Gracias, Lempira, a city two hours away. We sold L. 6000.00 worth of product there to 4 medium sized grocery stores, establishing good contacts, and an additional L 8000.00 on the way home passing through Santa Rosa! This second sale, although bigger, is not as important because it was an existing customer, but still, the liquidity is great.

However, I continue to be frustrated by forgotten promises and general apathy.

But life goes on, what can you do? At the very least, it’s interesting to observe behavior in other cultures. For example, my most recent frustration was with a newly formed financial cooperative in a little mountain town 20 minutes outside of San Marcos. The girl who is running the books asked for help on using some of the financial software, so they asked me to come out and take a look. Well, the first time we went, the key to the office did not come along, so we had a nice talk and set another date. That day nobody came to pick me up and the meeting was canceled. So finally, a week later I’m ready to go and the day before they come to tell me that the President of the coop has said that his written permission is needed before I can visit. The trip is canceled.

Now of course none of this really makes sense. If his written permission is required, why didn’t they just get it? Instead, they leave it up in the air whether we will follow up on this and nobody is sure what to do. Do they want me to wait a week and mention it again? Do I just wait and let them ask me again? Today, two days after the fact, my contact with them came by and we had an awkward “How are you? –Good. And you? –Good, how’s it going with you? – Good…” I take this to mean he’s waiting for me to ask about a follow up visit.

The other interesting aspect is the President’s denial of the visit. It’s important to realize that this cooperative has no paid employees and therefore there are no set schedule or office hours. So to even find the President on a given day would be hard. However, as President, he must make his presence felt and give his stamp of approval. Truly the fault is with us in not approaching him, kind of the tradition of giving credit where credit is certainly not due. This reminds me of advice my uncle John gave me before leaving of making sure you introduce yourself to the local jefe even if he’s completely unrelated to what you’re doing. He (or she) needs to know you’re working for him and not against him. Unfortunately I wasn’t even aware there was a president until he squashed my plans. As coach says: I need better situational awareness.

Lately another interest has been working with my friend Jorge on his coffee shop. He has a little corner of his mom’s huge store in San Marcos and has got himself an espresso machine and one of those break room automatic coffee machines (flavored coffees from a pre-made mix). So we’ve been decorating the place with all sorts of coffee paraphernalia. Uncle John’s favorite coffee blend, Caffe Umbria, is proudly displayed, although the bag is not full of Honduran coffee. I blew up a favorite photo (displayed below) in black and white and printed it on 16 pages of printer paper then assembled it into a huge poster and put a border on it. This hangs on the wall.

Jorge had a table built that is full of roasted and green coffee encased in the glass top. Really, I out to take some pictures of this. As for the business side, for my part I’ve created a basic program to track sales trends of different products so that we can see what sells best and what we need to eliminate. I’ll probably be coming to the states in the next few months to visit, so if you’re in Seattle, collect anything coffee related and I’ll haul it back to Honduras. Starbucks may also notice a disturbing trend of missing mugs…. Just kidding.

May 25th, 2007

Oh the time’s a flyin’. According to my ledger, I’m 59.14% of the way through my Peace Corps service, barring an extension or an early termination. According to the Peace Corps Cycle of Feelings, I’m entering the dangerous “Disillusion with development work, self doubt, and feeling of being time constrained by the ever nearing end of service date.” I regret not actually having that particular hand-out in my possession as I write this on the couch in my house, as it truly is a beautiful bureaucratic document, serving at once everyone and no one, kind of like a horoscope. However, just as this week’s predictions for Scorpio seem to fit (an interesting opportunity will present itself, stay away from the color orange, lucky numbers 27, 11, and 18), I feel like I’m pretty accurately summed up by the Peace Corps’ mood gauge.

So what causes the disillusionment that the “average” Peace Corps Volunteer feels? I think a contributing factor to this is the number of “corpses” that one sees alongside the international development highway. Last month it was a fully equipped processing plant which has been gathering dust for years. It’s the mayor opting to buy a new car for the mayor’s office (read: personal use) instead of purchasing a tract of land so that the European Union will construct a school on it. And most dispiriting at all is the cycle I so often see in my own projects:

1) We have a problem

2) We identify the problem and various solutions

3) We delegate responsibility

4) A minor problem complicates the situation

5) Nothing is done.

Reflecting on past attempts by others at projects here in my site of San Marcos de Ocotepeque, I see so many well intentioned ideas, so much time spent, material purchased, but at the end of it all, there’s almost nothing to show. No changed behavior, no progress.

I often attribute this to people simply not wanting to work. Unconsciously, they make the decision that the work needed to accomplish the goal is not worth the discounted value of the goal. That is to say, they don’t value a reward in the future as much as they value a smaller reward in the present. It’s the same idea as choosing between the option of having a dollar today and two dollars a year from now. Everyone would take the dollar today. But what if it were a dollar today and a hundred dollars a year from now?

I would take the hundred. The aid recipient who chooses not to do the work today for the reward tomorrow is taking the one dollar bill.

This makes me ask myself, will some people always be poor? The standard middle-upper class Honduran will tell you: I worked hard, and I still work hard, and that’s why I have a house and enough to eat. Of course, what he’s not telling you, and neither is the middle class American, is that he had a bunch of help along the way. Ok, fine, that’s the idea of development work: we’re here to provide the helping hand to pull you up so that you are able to support yourself on your own. But it takes a large effort on the recipient’s end, who is severely discounting that possibility of reward at the end of the hard work.

That’s the cycle.

Could it be the influence of this cycle that affects the Peace Corps Volunteer? Most people judge themselves on the visible fruits of their labor. In the cycle I described above, there are no results, only frustration.

June 6^th 2007

I wrote that entry last week, at the height of frustration. Re-reading it now doesn’t change my opinion much, but it makes me think of some new questions:

How do we identify a willing participant in international development? There needs to be a greater focus on partnership between recipient and donor. This is generally attempted by requiring the community to contribute labor or money. Is this enough?

What do we do about the non willing participant? Are they relegated to standing in line to get a bag of rice instead of attending a class on how to plant rice? Is there any other option for this “eternally poor” group?

How do you keep the aid worker connected to the aid recipient? I have found that the “cure” for these blues can be as simple as working on something where I am no better or more qualified than the Hondurans on the project. For example: construction, manual labor, etc. I’ll go to the women’s coop and cut jalapeños or go help lay bricks for a greenhouse. I find I become more disconnected when I’m explaining a new system or organization or teaching a class on excel because I’m far beyond the Honduran’s level of skill. It’s important for both donor and recipient to identify common ground and experience.

So those are some reflections, I’d appreciate your thoughts and comments, or just an update of how you’re doing. Also, check out the new pics that are located in the New Pics section. The link is on the sidebar to the right.