Honduras Teachers' Strike

I’m going to try to be careful about how I express myself on this topic, given that Peace Corps volunteers aren’t really supposed to publish opinions on political matters in their host country. Remember that these are my words, not the American government’s… But I am left frustrated by the continuing political clash between the Honduran government and the national teachers’ syndicate. Their 5 ½ week strike has just ended, but there are threats of an immediate repeat.

The teachers claim that corrupt government officials robbed the better part of their pensions fund amidst the confusion and chaos of 2009’s political crisis and that no one has yet been held accountable. [But then again, the teachers went on strike for that last year too.] The union also claims that the government is secretly scheming to privatize the entire education system of Honduras, which would, they claim, end the education of hundreds of thousands of children whose parents couldn’t afford to pay tuition. Privatization would also, not to mention, undoubtedly affect their salaries. So, for these reasons, and possibly more, the teachers’ union went on strike for more than a month, essentially shutting down blocks and blocks of Tegucigalpa in sometimes violent protests, and in effect making a mess of my plans to work in the schools this year.

It doesn’t help the delicate situation that the vast majority unionized teachers belong to “La Resistencia” (The Resistance), the political party of Mel Zelaya, the deposed president who was replaced by current president Pepe Lobo. It also doesn’t help that lame-duck presidents in past have conceded perhaps more than the government could really afford to the constantly fighting union: There is a strict one-term term limit on the presidency and increasing spending on education looks good to international aid organizations like the IMF and World Bank (that often tack on policy stipulations to their loan offers), not to mention is good for the public image of their party.

I agree that unions are helpful to put a check on capitalism that naturally pushes down wages and quality of working conditions as enterprises seek to expand profits. Indeed certain universal workers’ rights should be respected. But a balance should exist. In a country where the government struggles to collect even the slimmest portion of taxes owed to it by its citizens and that has been running on a decade-long deficit supported only by international aid organizations, the teachers have it pretty well. Too well?

You’d think it would make sense to invest in new schools, new classrooms, general repairs, new desks and chairs, chalkboards, useful books, training for teachers etc etc. But teachers’ salaries eat up a very high percentage of the entire education budget (some pundits claim more than 90%!). Plus, they don’t have to pay income taxes, hold lifelong jobs, get bonus pay if they work in rural communities (still the majority in Honduras), only have to have a high school diploma to be able to teach, and only teach half-days (a good part of which, kids are playing futbolito at recess). The principal of my school has one of the nicest houses in town with two stories and a garden. All this and teachers still found it necessary to be on strike for a month.

And what an ugly month it was in terms of resolving disagreements: riots and tear-gas in the streets of Tegucigalpa, one teacher died, several were jailed, both sides almost comically called the others’ bad names, and all the while, kids across the country simply lost all those days of potential learning. And trust me: at least the kids in my town need to study a whole lot more to be on par with children in the rest of the world in even the most basic of things like elementary reading and writing and mathematics, not to mention more complex things like science or history or just general critical thinking skills. Working in the fields or in the home instead of going to school is a problem when classes are actually being held-- and when they're not, there's no choice.

People in my town easily agreed with the teachers that the national government has been openly corrupt in the past and that little or nothing has been done to stop it. Politicians, after all, can afford to put their kids in private schools that aren’t affected by the strikes. And they would probably have been willing to fight alongside teachers for fairer rights or more education spending. But, parents were generally disgruntled at the teachers because, needless to say, they wanted to see their children going to classes. They called for other ways to fight for their rights, alternatives that wouldn’t harm kids’ education.

Then, all of a sudden, teachers started giving classes again. It seems to me that nothing actually happened to end the strike. It all feels immature and out-of-the-blue to me and certainly with no easy solution. Things seem to have gotten way out of hand over something that, in my opinion, is trivial in the grand scheme of things and simply misses the point. Both sides are to be to blame and the whole system has gotten all messed up. For me, I’m most definitely left on the sideline of this thing, with fingers crossed that people will just cool it for a while and get on with classes.

More blog posts will happen soon, I promise. In the meantime, have a happy Holy Week!

Ecotourism Project: guides, food and lodging

I´m writing this at 10:30 the night before I go to Santa Barbara and it reminds me of writing papers at the last minute in college. There is no Internet in my town, so I have to write all my emails and blog stuff at home then carry them on a USB to SB because I never have enough time at the Internet café to sit an type them there. Alas, here are a few things I’ve been working on recently in my town:

1. More financial analysis stuff at the coop
2. School has started up again for kids here (and thus for me too)
3. Ecotourism committee

1. Financial analysis at the coop.
On the heels of the meeting I had with the Board of Directors of my coffee cooperative, I’ve been working on ways to help them implement some of the changes I recommended. For example, I think I’ve convinced them to stop the free lunches at meetings. There’s still doing sweetbread and coffee though, heh—we’re all addicts to coffee around here. Also, I’ve been helping Lucas, the administrator, work out a break-even analysis followed up by a projected cash flow, to see how we can actually achieve an expansion in our production. We’ve also been discussing doing some local promotion to coffee farmers who aren’t members of the coop, to match our cash flow projections with ‘coffee-flow’ projections, if you will. As it stands, we aren’t buying as much coffee as we could or as much as we want to. Also, I will finally be giving personal finance trainings to the members of my coop starting in March, with the objective of reducing the amount of cash advances and loans they’re taking out each year. Finally, a team of five Canadians came down and visited the coop from Van Houtte, our buyer. They wanted to meet the members, see the farms, see the factory, and talk business. It turns out that they’ve got their eyes set on buying much, much more. It was fun meeting them and putting faces to the myths of our “Buyers up in the North.” As it turns out, in a twist of irony, Van Houtte was bought out by the American coffee giant, Green Mountain in Vermont back in December… and in case you didn’t know, Montaña Verde, the name of my coop, means ‘Green Mountain.’

2. School begins: thus my work there too
I’ve talked to the principal of the school and it looks like I’ve gotten myself roped into doing after school extracurricular groups with kids. Last year I did a journalism group with 4-6th graders. I’ll be repeating it this year, but with a different bunch of kids. I think we may work on putting together a photo-documentation pamphlet of the community and of the cloud forest to use for the community’s ecotourism project. But I’ll also have a Business club with the 7-9th graders where we will learn business fundamentals, visit various businesses, and, hopefully, they will come with an idea and start their own school business. Also, I will have a Nature Club—I haven’t decided its focus yet, but there’s a lot of material to work with here. Plus, Alicia, the volunteer just down the road from me, is a biologist, so I’m sure she’ll help with ideas if I need them. On top of three clubs, which will keep me busy in the afternoons during the week, I’ll be giving classes to the teachers in English and computation—it’s really just going over exercises they can use directly in their own classrooms to help facilitate their teaching. We shall see if they decide to show up this year. Finally, we had talked about planning monthly school-wide events like painting a world map, poetry or essay competitions, art or science fairs, rocket competitions etc. Working with youth is definitely one of the major goals of my project in the Peace Corps, and I feel that it’s always a worthwhile activity to do in my community, when I’m not at the cooperative.

3. Ecotourism committee makes progress
The ecotourism committee that I help Alicia organize is just now starting up trainings for guides. Our idea is to have a bunch of guides ready to attend tourists, once our marketing efforts have begun seeing results. Guides are crucial not because of their knowledge of trails and local plants and animals, but because they’ll know things to offer to the tourist to do—they’ll be the direct salesmen, pitching horseback riding or cave exploring or visiting a coffee farm. So we will be giving our guides a 10 session course and this next topic I’m in charge of: customer service. How exciting. We’re also working with families to offer food and room and board. The next step is working out pricing and packages and promotional deals and finally more comprehensive marketing. The ultimate dream is to form an NGO out of the committee and hire employees to coordinate things like guides, services, and marketing. But we’ve still got a ways to go.

It’s been cold and rainy for close to a week now. And before that, it was hot and dry and dusty. It can’t make up its mind. I suppose I really can’t complain though, being in the Tropics through winter and all.

Cold in Honduras? Actually, yes.

Aloe plant flowers, AKA alien growths.

Hello loved ones and friends and random people I dont know. I am posting a lot of words here to send out a broad update on my life as a volunteer in the Peace Corps. As Ive said here in this blog before, look at the list of contents first and then go on to read only what interests you- otherwise Id feel sort of guilty obliging you to scan the whole damn entry because you feel you have to. Youd get bored that way- or I would at least.

1. Cold in Honduras? Where am I?
2. My computer fixed: life has normalized again!
3. Firecrackers: who was the bastard who sold a truckoad of firecrackers to every kid in my town?
4. Business training (yes, Im actually doing some work too): to my coffee coop and personal finanze classes to families
5. Survey and Census results: any statisticians out there?
6. Ecotourism Committee and a chat on Global Warming: environment=good
7. My work in the school: (kids=good, when no firecrackers)
8. November, December plans: Panama and a visit from family

1. Cold in Honduras?
Who would have guessed? I certainly didnt expect to be cold in the tropics, but it's true. The last month it has been in the mid, and even low, 50s in my site. And it's grey and rainy. It's not going to snow, but having just gotten used to 8 months of 80 and 90 degree weather, the 50s have come as a big surprise. Plus, housing insullation isn't really a common thing here. But, it is actually a welcome change and it feels like fall back home. Give me cold over sweltering hot any time of the year, any latitude of the globe.

2. My computer is fixed
The Osteens step into action. Something broken? We know how to fix it. Something highly technical requiring many difficult steps to fix? Yeah, no problem. Father and son, handymen extraordinaire, save the day... okay, youre right, normally this statement would be highly sarcastic. This time, however, it's actually true. I must thank my father for sending me just what I needed to get my computer fixed and just in time. Best of all, for some amazing miracle or other, none of my memory was lost during the months my computer was experiencing the black screen of death. So, movies, pictures, and music have returned to my life, as well as word processing (hence the long blog entry this time around) and Excel and Powerpoint and Internet (on the sparse ocassions when I go somewhere that has WiFi) etc. And it feels good.

This is not the Peace Corps of the 60s. It is my humble opinion that people need computing abilities to be able to function productively in this century. Old people may disagree with me, but, you try living without a computer for a few months, all the while listening to various Honduran radio stations, and see how long you maintain your sanity. Okay, I didnt go insane without my computer, but I was close.

3. Firecrackers.
Some jerk came to my site and made a ton of money marketing firecrackers to every boy aged 5 to 15 in San Luis Planes. Yes, Im simply complaining right now, but these kids have gone crazy with blowing things up and my once peaceful site now perpetually sounds like a war zone. You'll just be sitting there, maybe with a spoonful of hot soup in your hand or maybe concentrating on translating a sentence for your writeup on the census you just finished, when BANG, BANG, BANG, there's a series of explosions just outside your house. Or maybe it's 6:30 in the morning. Or maybe it's 10:30 at night.

And, sure enough, when I asked one of the little buggerfaces why they were setting off so many firecrackers these days, he said it was because Christmas is getting closer. Obviously.

4. Business training (real work).
Yes, I am still chuggin along on my actual Peace Corps work too. My life's not all technological, climatic, firecracker drama. This past week, I finally imparted a full day's presentation to the members of my coffee coop to prepare them to revise their business plan. Not to brag too much about the experience, but I feel like it was a pretty big success. We shall see in November how our revision goes, but I have high hopes.

Also, Ive been working on a series of short classes to give to families in my town on all things personal finance. According to the results of the survey that I conducted, the average number of years studied amongst the people in my town is 4.3. This means that almost nobody knows what a budget is or how (or why) to save. And, for a town that is struggling with perpetual poverty, in a place whose economy (income) depends principally on a seasonal crop, I think that some basic financial know-how could be of some real use. Sure, I'm trying to make these sessions basic and practical, so that people will actually be able to get something out of them. The goal is to start in November and Ive got the support of the local Patronato, the town council, to help me get people convinced to show up.

5. Survey and Census results.
Ive now officially completed a survey and a census of San Luis Planes. In case you're interested, here are a few of the results of the survey. There are 1325 people living in my site and 309 separate families and 349 houses. Of the 309 families, 35 have 5 or more acres of farmland (apx 11%) meaning that they are the rich people in town.

There is pretty interesting data on ages, that is good news, I think (sorry about the crappy version of the chart):

Younger people study more and have less children. But there is still a lot of work to do, obviously.

100% of the population uses wood burning stoves which, at the base of a protected cloud forest, can be an environmental risk. Not to mention that some of these stoves aren't ventillated externally and thus all the smoke stays in the house causing a wide range of respiratory problems, especially for children. And the average number of children per family is 4.4. Some families, though, have as many as 11 children and some household have as many as 12 people living there.
41% of people burn their trash and another 41% simply throw it somewhere. 6% of families still don't have a latrine in their house and have to use "campo libre" (the open field... they go outside). In 51% of the households in San Luis Planes, the mother does not work outside of the house. 49% of the population has to travel outside of the town to buy food. Also, 49% has to travel outside of the town to buy medicine. 94% of the population depends on the buses. So that means that if something happens to the buses or to the roads, half of the population would have a hard time getting food and medicine.

6. Ecotourism Committee.

Notice the epiphyte growth, looking up inside the cloud forest.

The two other PC volunteers who live in my area, both volunteers working with the Protected Areas Management project (ie the environmental volunteers), formed a committee that promotes ecotourism in our three towns. By the time I arrived to site, it was already up and running and thus, I got to hop on board just after the hardest part had been tackled.

One of the offshoot pools by the trail in the park.

Ecotourism, of course, means that the people here have an opportunity to make money while protecting the national park. Win win. The committee is working on environmental education right now, giving a series of chats to each community on topics like local natural resources, environmentally-friendly waste management, and bird migration. Im working on the next session with a couple other members and we'll be talking about global warming and how it is likely to affect Central America and a few things that people here can do to help mitigate the problem. Of course, global warming has to be a myth made up by those crazed leftwing scientists because it's cold in Honduras right now. Heh.
In the future, the committee will be training guides and finding families that are willing to sell food and rent rooms to tourists. We'll also be working on marketing and transportation. The dream is to one day convert the committee into an NGO that strives to protect the forest while promoting ecotourism. Our community members seem, for the most part, energized and committed.

So come down and visit the cloud forest, see some tucans.

7. Work in the school.

The school year here will end in less than a month and doesn't start up again until the end of February. Almost all of the kids here help their families harvest coffee starting in November. So after the teachers' strike that lasted almost a month, I wasn't left with a whole lot of time to get things accomplished in the school this school year. Lots of my work there will start next school year.

My journalism group is down to two (perhaps three) weeks before we are done. They've done a good job so far and have been enthusiastic about getting to use the computers to type up their articles. Teaching them how to revise their articles has been the most challenging. Many of them didn't even know what "revise" meant. But, we've been working hard and I think we'll be proud of our final product. They'll be up for sale once they're printed. So while you're coming down to visit the cloud forest to help out our ecotourism committee, you can buy a local paper too.

This coming week, a Health volunteer from a town nearby will be coming in to help the two other volunteers here and me give an HIV/AIDS awareness chat to the 6th-9th graders of the school in my site. We all had practice giving such sessions during training, so it should be a piece of pastel. They are really well written sessions and I think the kids end up getting a lot out of them. We'll even be doing banana-condom demonstrations.

I think that after mulling it over for a long time, Ive decided to start giving English classes to the adults of the community at large. I tried starting English classes for the teachers of my school here, but it never worked out, they never showed up. So I was hesitant to try again with a new audience. And some PC volunteers are against the idea all together, claiming that teaching English only extends American imperialism or that we're only training people here to become illegal immigrants in the US. But personally, Im of the opinion that learning a language is good for the brain and, like it or not, learning English opens the doors for success here in Honduras. So there. I may also be starting English classes directly to the school kids next school year-- but we shall have to see about that because Im not really trying to become a school teacher (too many headaches for me).

Finally, now that our principal here finally consented to installing the 15 computers that were delivered last year, I have a shiny new computer lab to work with. I'll be starting computer classes to the teachers beginning next school year that they'll be passing on to the kids. Internet is the next step.

8. November and December Plans.

Im headed to Panama City, Panama the first week in November. Then at the end of the month, Im planning to visit friends in the Department of Olancho (which, as Hondurans love to brag, is bigger than the entire country of El Salvador) for Thanksgiving. Im excitidely expecting visitors for a week in early December. Then, some of my PC friends and I have been talking about renting an island in the Carribean for Christmas. Apparently it's quite an affordable thing to do these days. Rent and entire island. Who knew?

So that's all from me my Internet readers. Hope your eyes didn't fall out from having to read so much. I send my best from here.

My site!

Greetings from San Luis Planes, Santa Bárbara! Well, I made it to site. Everything is so new and exciting here that it’s going to be hard to sum up all that’s been going on in the past two weeks. I love the community and my family and my work. I think that that’ll be a good order to try and describe things:

1. Community
2. Family/community members
3. Work/ “counterpart”

1. Community. You wouldn’t believe how scenic San Luis Planes is (“San Luis,” for short—though not to be confused with the larger city of San Luis, also in the department of Santa Bárbara). We’re above 2000 meters here, though it’s probably closer to 2300 or 2400—which comes out to be more than 6000 ft above sea level. This little coffee town of about 1500 people is surrounded by the tips of mountains that are covered with a thick forest. Clouds roll through these hills everyday bringing in beautiful views, cool weather, and RAIN. It’s been raining about every afternoon and/or night so far. It feels like Peter Jackson could have filmed some movie here, it’s such a dramatic view. I don’t have any pictures that do it credit yet, but once I take a good one, I’ll post it. The one that I am posting is the view from my back yard.

I’m kind of isolated where I am, which is great (and something I had sort of hoped for). It’s the real deal Peace Corps. I’m about an hour and a half away from the city of Santa Bárbara, the capital of the department, and the place that I’ll be going to do banking, buying groceries and other necessities (and getting Internet and cell phone service—that’s right, I don’t have cell phone service in my site). Peña Blanca, another bigger place with stuff to do and buy, is about an hour away.

I’m also about an hour and a half from Lake Yojoa, Honduras’ largest lake. On the ride up to my site, Alex Rosales, my counterpart (see number 3) and I stopped at the lake and ate fresh tilapia on the veranda of a restaurant right on the lake.

The national park here has one of the best/most pristine cloud forests in the country and we get a lot of ecotourists because of it. My two PC neighbors are in the project called Protected Areas Management, and they’re working with a local committee dedicated to developing this. I joined them last week.

2. Family/ Community Members. The day before I got into town, my future host family decided that they couldn’t host me because the madre got sick. So, when I got to town, it was a surprise meeting a new family, that I didn’t have the facts on. But, I’m actually with the brother and his family. They have a six year old son named Erick who’s in the second grade, and a sixteen year old daughter Kelyn, who lives with an aunt and uncle in Santa Bárbara where she goes to high school. (The local school only goes to 9th grade). They’re friendly and patient. The dad (along with his brother) is a community leader and is well respected in the town. He owns around 10 “manzanas” of farmland up in the hills (manzanas, I think, are approximately equivalent to hectares) where he grows coffee.

I’m still in the community analysis phase of service, where I’m meeting everyone and gaining “confianza,” or building up trust and friendship. I’m going to be going around doing a survey this week, actually. It’s really amazing how nice people are, and happy they are to meet a gringo. Most of the people I meet think that I’m from Spain because of my strange accent. I hear lots of stories about other PC volunteers who have been here in the past (two married couples, most recently) and a few Spaniards who set up the carpentry shop in town. I know my way around town already, considering there are two roads.

Almost everybody here depends on coffee production in some way or another. Either they own land where coffee is grown, or they pick coffee for the landowners, or they work for the coffee coop where I’m working. The quality of coffee is very high and I think I’m in heaven. (But asking for it without sugar confuses people.)

3. Work/ “Counterpart”. So when our training directors went around the country doing “site development,” they looked for people and organizations in our future communities that we’d be able to work with. These people they match us with are called “counterparts” in PC lingo. Some volunteers work with their counterparts for all two years while others use their counterparts as a launching point to meet the community then start work on other things.

I have two counterparts. My main counterpart I’ve already mentioned. His name is Alex Rosales and he’s the manager of the coffee coop called Montaña Verde. He’s very motivated and really wants the best for its future. He is also an expert coffee “catador” and knows all the technical stuff about what goes into making the best cup of coffee imaginable.

Montaña Verde (see picture), as a company, was founded just in 2006 with the help of an international NGO called CARE. Officially, it’s a coop of coops, that coordinates the efforts and production of 5 separate companies from five different communities in the zone to process and then export coffee. It has 56 members and buys additionally from more than 200 independent producers. All the coffee it buys and processes (11 “lotes,” or 4,125 “quintales,” or 412,500 lbs) is exported to Canada and sold there by a distributor under the brand name of Van Houte. I’ll be helping the company revise its business plan, implement a digital inventory control system, updating its accounting system, helping to broaden its marketing and diversify its financing, among other things. In the process, I’m learning all about coffee and its production. I couldn’t be more excited.

My second counterpart is the principal of the local school, where I’ll be teaching computer skills (once they get the computers set up, heh), as well as English and maybe some environmental stuff too. I am also planning on starting a journalism group with some of the kids, as well as perhaps a chess club.

As far as other work, I’m also coordinating with the ecotourism project. I am also helping with the “Patronato,” the local town council or alderman’s board, to write a work plan and help prioritize their efforts. Who knows what else I’ll be getting into in the next two years? I’m a “community resource,” according to the Peace Corps, and I want to pitch in wherever I can. Once I get to know people more, I’ll be able to understand their needs better.