No more rose-colored glasses

OK, it’s been two three months. So, prepare yourselves; this one is a book. Shall we do a condensed catch-up on life here first?

1. I spent 2 perfect weeks at home, stuffing myself with blueberries and hugging all the people I love.  
2. I visited some friends in the neighboring community of Río Esteban and fell in love with Honduras all over again.
3. I accompanied Annie to Guatemala for a few exhilarating days, road-tripping to Almolonga where she lived 4mo.  
4. I studied for and took the GRE (grad-school entrance exam) in the energizing, bustling capitol, Tegucigalpa.
5. Some of my kiddos reached new impressive heights in their developmental progress. 
6. I finished my last online class and am officially FREE to enjoy my last months here and finish up my projects, including more consistent bloggingJ Here goes…            

         Like all those methodical sunbathed waves at sunrise here, life has been rolling along smoothly and beautifully for the past couple months. And yet, I’ve been really craving your prayers lately. I’ve been spending a lot of time painting the rosy picture of my life and work here in Honduras, mostly because that is the way I want to think about it. I want to see and remember the very best. Don’t we all? I truly love living in northern Honduras, but now I’d like to process the not-so-great parts that are a reality for all those living here. Truthfully, we are craving your prayers, because we’re not doing this work in Honduras alone. Pray for Honduras!

         Honduras needs and deserves your prayers. Hondurans are humble, unpretentious, joyful, and generous. They are tireless workers who have “fuerzas para superarse” (an impressive strength to improve and overcome). Of all peoples I know, they are the country most invested in their own reform. They are determined. Dedicated. Passionate. But stuck, trapped really. So they need the world’s cooperation, compassion and prayers. 
         Honduras is trapped in it’s own corruption and violence. The corruption in this country is horrifically debilitating. Just a few weeks ago a “Police Purging Committee” evaluated the police force leadership and removed a third of them for being corrupt, and it is commonly believed that about half of the police force is corrupt. And by corrupt, I don’t just mean that they take bribes. Many cops here are also known to be in cahoots with the local gangs. They will actually notify gang leadership of people who came to the police to report gang crime, so that the gangs can brutally dispose of the snitches. Not surprisingly then, Hondurans rarely trust the police enough to report violent crime. Reporting crime comes at high personal risk. 
         

This picture was taken at the
funeral of this baby's father. He had
intervened to rescue a girl from abuse
and was killed. The murderer is still free.

For example, imagine this: an angry drunkard loses a bet with a neighbor. In anger he hunts down his neighbor’s wife and four children in the night and slaughters them all face-to-face with a machete. The murderer suffers no consequences and still walks happy and free in a nearby mountain community. This really happened, on a pristine, palm-dotted beach just a 5-minute walk from my apartment. People rarely go to that beach today. Now, granted this happened years ago, and perhaps the police were notified but just unequipped to search for and prosecute the man. However, regardless of the reason for the absence of police response, many ruthless criminals enjoy impunity here. Most homicides in this area of the country aren’t even investigated (although improvements are being made! See AJS link below). Imagine then that you live in constant rattling fear not only of the gangs that control your neighborhood and extort “war taxes” from every family and business, but also you fear the very police who are supposed to be your protection. In some neighborhoods, the police are so corrupt that ironically people prefer the “protection” of the criminals to that of the police. A friend of mine told me that he was lucky to be living next to the home of the drug lord in his neighborhood. He explained that the narcos have the means to protect themselves, and in protecting themselves they create a safety bubble surrounding their homes. 
         So where is the government in all of this? Government officials play a large role in police corruption (and other types of corruption). Many police are underpaid, understaffed, and starving for resources to do their jobs. Here in Balfate, there are only two police for dozens of communities stretching along the coast. Those two police didn’t have their own vehicle until recently, so if someone were experiencing a crisis, someone else would have to go pick up the police miles away in their own car and bring them to the scene. They would be lucky to arrive in time. Why didn’t the police have a car? Because the government often expects them to fund their own resources: cars, guns, bullets…  and given that they are underpaid, the police can’t always afford to buy their tools. Thankfully, some new policies are beginning to change this dysfunctional system. 
        Police corruption is only one face of the ugly, multi-faceted monster of corruption and violence in Honduras. Many of Honduras’ leaders are corrupt tycoons, and most Hondurans would include the current president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, in this category. Hernandez has faced multiple accusations of embezzlement and has saturated high-influence government positions with people who are his allies. Over and over, Hondurans are calling for his resignation.

         

This baby girl's momma was mixed up in a gang and
running from rival gang violence. She gave the baby up
to another family to protect her. 

With the country’s very leaders deeply entrenched in corruption, funds are not sufficiently allocated to protection and social services for the most vulnerable, so the average Honduran family is alone in its despair, facing poor education, few employment opportunities, violence and corruption at every turn, and social services that are out of reach or non-existent. Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa (AJS), a robust anti-violence and anti-corruption association creating systematic change in Honduras, has said, “corruption at the highest levels of government obstructs the ability of the poor to receive the basic services that will give them a better life.” With almost 63% of the population living in poverty, that’s a lot of desperate poor people. Then, when parents are murdered, die, are abusive or have untreated health issues, children are pressured to work and support the family, or they just skip what little educational opportunities are offered and survive on the streets. Without social services or well-enforced laws, there aren’t other options. They look for somewhere to fit in and a way to survive, and end up getting involved in gang culture and subsequent violence. There they perpetuate the violence, grow up in poverty, raise broken families, and the cycle continues. It’s ugly. It’s painful. It’s infuriating. 
            A couple months ago, seeing this horrible cycle was suffocating me. I was talking to the man squished next to me on the tiny bus seat on the 2-hour bus ride to the city (La Ceiba). I was absolutely suffocating, and it wasn’t just because of the heat. I was fed-up. Dejected. So I complained to my seat partner (we’ll call him Andres), “Why are Hondurans here so chismosos (destructive gossipers)? Why are they so blunt with their words? Why is their outlook on life so harsh? Why do they lie? Why do they reject my friendship and my ideas just because I’m a gringa?.” We had been talking about cultural differences, and he was so understanding that I felt comfortable and so had just been rapid-firing my angry, selfish questions at him. Andres listened patiently as I explained all the troubles in the Lucinda bubble…
         I was trying to gain the trust of the community and learn from them so that I could understand their struggles and come alongside them to tackle some of the issues. My friendship was being rejected though, and my knowledge of working with children with special needs was scoffed at. I would hear, “Hey, if that kid is disabled, then that’s the way God made him. He can’t learn so stop trying to teach him. Crazy gringas and their crazy ideas…” There were so many bad habits, so much ignorance. I also wondered, why did so many people that I had never even met spread outrageous unfounded rumors about me? According to some, I had been sleeping around in Ceiba on the weekends. What?!! And then there were the rules for how to be a Christian. Instead of a focus on love, relationships and service, I heard don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t dance, and don’t even play soccer (for some). Done, saved. But to infidelity, machismo, or even abuse no one seemed to bat an eye.
         Now, I didn’t say all of that to him. He is Honduran after all, and I didn’t want to offend him. But I told him most of it. Also to clarify, I was so absurdly wrong. I was angry and exaggerating. Andres had an amused smirk on his face though, probably thinking, “who is this crazy gringa who is just dumping all her miniscule life troubles on me?” He answered me though, and he was painfully sincere. He told me that he loves Hondurans, the same people I had found to be sometimes ignorant, rude, untrusting and untrustworthy. He talked about how his people tireless workers; working 12 hours a day is not uncommon. Honduras are unpresumptuous and wholly generous, because despite humble living conditions, they are always ready to serve up the fatted calf (or in this case the fatted fried chicken) for any stranger that walks through the door. Andres also exclaimed, “!Hondureños son alegres!”. They are joyful. They seem to be able to find the happy moments in the sea of mundane and laborious events and just bask in them. I’ve been living these sort of diamond-in-the-rough moments a lot lately. Just this past week in Río Esteban, I spent three hours cooking lunch with one of my best friends. Three hours! Food preparation is always a treasured and labor-intensive event here, and eating is a highlight of the day. We laughed and teased, and my waistline grew a few inches, and suddenly those three hours were not a waste of precious time, but rather the perfect way to spend a Saturday. 
         And as for the negative characteristics that I had observed, Andres explained most of them. Hondurans on the rural northern coast are chismosos because there is little else to do. Many girls are married in their early teens, and their husbands prefer that they stay in the house away from prying eyes, making babies and tortillas. Also, there are no newspapers, few televisions, and just one reaching radio channel. Realistically, there is no news, so many people here make their own news (gossip) and spread it by word of mouth all day long. As for being uneducated, only the very fortunate can access adequate education here. Andres addressed untrustworthiness and lack of trust as well. He described them as survival tactics. Hondurans where I live generally learn to be wary of everyone at an early age. They are slow to trust because life circumstances may have disappointed them at every turn. Some are even untrustworthy, because they live in desperation and consequently act with disregard for others who may be harmed in the process. 
        For example, we have been dealing with some thievery at the children’s home, and I angrily brought the issue to Iain (director). “Iain, what are we going to do about this?” His response surprised and frankly annoyed me. He shrugged, smiled and said, “Nothing. I don’t like it, but this is just a deeply engrained survival tactic that will take time to break. So many of these people can’t be sure they will have their needs met the next day, so they might steal food and clothes to hide away for when they don’t have any.”  I saw this while I worked at a residential home for newly-immigrated teen Hispanics as well. Some of them would hide sandwiches and extra clothes in their rooms even though the house refrigerator was always full and accessible. They couldn’t fathom that food would be always readily available.
        Of course, none of this means that stealing should be condoned, but it is a testament to the bleak conditions of life here. Similarly, I don’t describe these cultural differences to indicate in any way that I will be trading in my mid-western cultural “niceness” for a more coarse, harsh, or painfully honest approach to life, but rather to say that I understand this perspective. And honestly I think the blithe, comfortable, middle-upper class, Bahamas-vacationing, evangelical Christians of the US could use a dose of this painfully honest worldview that so many people in our world live by. Maybe we need to remove our rose-colored glasses and put on a pair of realistic Honduran glasses. Maybe then we will see the hurt, poverty, violence, and injustice around us and be moved to do something about it. 

Check out some of the data and the news I cited here:

Worldbank data - Honduras

NY times: How the Most Dangerous Place on Earth Got Safer

Association for a More Just Society (AJS)