What now for Honduras?

As I write this, I am sitting on a train traveling between DC and Baltimore.  It is very different from travel in Honduras.  Foremost in my mind right now is my ability to pull out my laptop in public and not be afraid of being robbed in the next 5 minutes.  It’s also very quiet, the only noise being soft muted conversation and the occasional click-clack of the rails.  No blaring reggeton, and I kind of miss it.   The reggeton makes the trip go by faster.  Also, no one wants to sit next to a stranger.  There are rows of three seats, only two people are sitting in them, and no one is standing.  No chickens, no ayudante, no dust, and it is winter outside the window.

We will be in the States until early January, then we will be back in Honduras for about a week before we leave, possibly for good.  There has been a lot of turmoil in Honduras recently, and Peace Corps is taking strong action.  The crime rate has been steadily rising for years now, with the murder rate currently at 86 per 100,000.  For comparison, the United States is around 5 per 100,000.  This rise in the murder rate has been fueled mostly by drug traffickers.  I’ve seen estimates that upwards of $80 billion in cocaine pass through Honduras every year.  In a country with a GDP of about $15 billion, that is a HUGE amount.   In June, Peace Corps Honduras moved 7 volunteers out of eastern Olancho, the department we live in, due to sky rocking violence and the potential for a Volunteer to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.   There was an almost incident where a PCV was inside a pulperia when some guys standing outside got shot up in a drive by.  A few weeks after that incident, they were all moved to sites in safer parts of the country.

But the violence has continued.  In September, an American tourist was gang raped in a ‘safe’ part of the country.  Peace Corps notified us about it and reminded us to follow all security recommendations to reduce our risk exposure.  I feel that Peace Corps Honduras staff has done a tremendous job in a dangerous country to let us know what the risks are and how we can best avoid them, from pickpockets to armed bus robberies, and how to best respond if we find ourselves involved in a situation.  Unfortunately, the wrong place at the wrong time has become more often in more of the country.   A few weeks ago a volunteer was shot.  She was riding what had been a safe, direct bus line, and was traveling for PC training.  During the ride, a few guys stood up, pulled out guns, and demanded phones.  Halfway though, a passenger pulled out his own gun, said no, killed one of the robbers and injured another before they killed him.  In the gunfight, a few other passengers were caught in the crossfire, including the PCV.  Her leg was broken, but she is safely in DC and recovering well.  You can read a Honduran newspaper article about the attack in Spanish here: http://laprensa.hn/Secciones-Principales/Sucesos/Un-muerto-en-atraco-a-bus-de-SPS-La-Esperanza  Or, in Google translated English, click here.

This was another case of wrong place wrong time, but it got a lot of Volunteers wondering if all of Honduras is the wrong place wrong time right now.  It generated a huge amount of chatter among the volunteer networks.   PC was going to make changes in the wake of this accident, and many Volunteers took the time to talk with PC about their concerns and to provide suggestions.  Peace Corps has decided to slow down and do an intensive examination of security risk in Honduras, and Central America.  They canceled the next incoming training groups for Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador so that staff in country could spend time not on training but reviewing the security situation and policies to ensure Volunteer safety.   Honduras is going a step further as the security situation is a bit worse.  PC Honduras has put all Volunteers on standfast for the next month, which means you are not allowed to leave your site.  The majority of Volunteers feel safe in their site where they know their community and are well integrated.  Then, sometime in January, PC Honduras is going to have an all Volunteer meeting where we will learn more about what has been decided, after which we all be sent to the US for 30 days on an administrative hold.  PC/H staff will be using that time without volunteers to conduct intensive site visits and determine what sites are still safe and who will be allowed back.  It seems likely that PC Honduras will be a much smaller post after this.  We are at 158 Volunteers now, and the best guess amongst Volunteers is that there will be less than 50 to return, if any return at all.  You can read the official Peace Corps announcement here: http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1932

So where does that leave us?  We don’t know anything yet, so we can only speculate.   We expect that our site will be deemed too dangerous and closed.  After that, we don’t really know.  We might be able to get a different site in Honduras.  We might be able to transfer to a different country.  We might just be done with Peace Corps and looking for work elsewhere.  We just don’t know yet.

Vamos a ver.

Reconnect and S&S

So I know that I promised the next post would be about family vacation.  I lied.  Well, it's not my fault really.  You see, mom and Mariah just started school again and John.... well he doesn't really have any excuse.  Anyway, I'm going to write about other things instead.



The 7th-10th of September was our Reconnect.  Reconnect is where everyone of the same project gets together to share about their work, sit through some boring-but-occasionally-useful lectures, and remember how great friends we were during training (or not).  This year, due to the budget situation, PC-H decided to hold Business, Health, and Wat-San reconnects all at the same place.  Not only was our entire training group there, but also the H-16ers--most of whom we hadn't met before.  All in all, most volunteers treated it like a giant party, and sometimes it was. 

Reconnect was hard for me.  It's difficult to sit and listen to other people talk about their work--especially when they are working in Food Security and neither asked for that, nor wanted to.  I was (and probably still am) angry at my project staff for building up my expectation of my counterpart which have turned out to be all false.  I think I could have handled not getting a FS project much better if they hadn't mislead my beliefs about what I was getting.  Disappointment is a harder emotion to get over than the others.  We also sat through several lectures about the new Acceso program from USAID which we don't qualify for in the east.  That was an awesome kick in the ass, especially since my project team is well aware that I sent them an email about what is up with my counterpart, and they haven't acknowledged it.

Anyway, I talked a while about it with TJ who lives south of us here and is my closest BZ neighbor.  He told me when he got to Salama, it was none of the things he asked for.  He pretty much spent a year not really having work, and feeling bitter about his assignment.  It was only recently that he started to have work again, and now he's happier.  The conclusion that I came to from all of this is that I want to try to love La Union for what it is, instead of hating it for what it's not.  And that, I suppose, can apply to all areas of my life. 


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On that note, safety and security has been much a concern here in Honduras lately.  Some new rules have come down restricting volunteer travel and get-togethers, mostly aimed at curbing public-drunkenness and the dangers that possesses.  It frustrates me a lot that Peace Corps has to put policies like that in place, since especially here in Olancho, we get together for nights of safe fun on a regular basis, and I feel like if we didn't we might all go insane.  There is no social life to speak of for many of us in our own towns.  Jeff and I are in by 6 (7 at the latest, but it's already dark by then), and we don't go out after dark.

Honduras has a lot of security problems unrelated to volunteer stupidity as well.  The murder rate here is the highest in the world (more dangerous than Afghanistan), and rising due to increasing drug violence.  Every month we get more disturbing updates about things like violence outside of Trujillo (there's an ongoing land dispute), or someone getting jumped in the woods by men with masks and then raped.  Thankfully neither of those things are near us, but the potential for violence everywhere in this country is very high.  Jeff and I are constantly asking ourselves if we can be effective here with all the limitations these security problems impose.  I think if asking to be relocated to a safer post was an option, we would be seriously considering that.  Unfortunately married couples do not really have the option, like single people, to not accept their first invitation to the Peace Corps.  We are told that "Very rarely does any couple get a second placement consideration", which means there's only one shot.

If you are considering joining the Peace Corps, think very hard about what is most important to you.  If safety and security is important, make that known to your placement officer.  However, if you had asked me if safety and security was important to me last year, I would probably have said that it wasn't any more important to me than the next person.  However, now I feel like it really restricts our ability to be effective volunteers while not breaking all of the safety and security rules.