Tony's Travel Blog - Part 2
Tony Traback, our Pastor of Mission Mobilization, recently returned from a trip to Honduras and Nicaragua to spend time with our partners there. We are presenting his reflections in a four-part series. This is the second installment. Click here for the prior installment.
bLoG4: Honduras, Day Two in La Tigra
On day two, I awoke after a good nights sleep, and Jairo and I drove 12 km up a dirt road to La Tigra (where our church put a roof on Iglesia en Tranformacion’s satellite church last year.) One cannot justly describe the beauty of the lush green steep hills. As many of you know, years ago I served in the Peace Corps in a little rural village. The village is located in similarly lush green steep hills. Since coming back from the Kenya, I had yet to find a similar location. The primary differences are two. First, in La Tigra there are many Pine trees—which happens to be the national tree of Honduras. Second, in Kenya, the hills overlooked the Serengeti Plain and Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. Here they overlook a huge city way way way down the hillside. I had always thought I would not find a similar place. Now I have.
When we arrived I met Walter (coordinator of the church and project) and Geraldo (the head of the elders). Next, I received a tour of the 14 acre property. It began with a look at their strawberry crop and proceeded down to the River—which I might add in this rainy season is flowing with a gusto! Here, in a small pool, they baptize new Christians. I have never seen such a beautiful baptismal pool! Located along a gushing river, the merger of two lush “jungle” hills, it is quite a site to see.
On the way back up the hill to the church-plant, I noticed long piles of pines needles. I asked why they had piled the pine needles in 40 foot rows about two feet tall, and Geraldo replied that it prevents erosion. Nice!
Back on level ground, I visited Walter’s home, which is located on church property and the worship area—where our ICE team put a roof last year. And it works quite well they tell me. Good work ICE team…!!!
If this short story has captured your attention (if it has not, I apologize), I also wanted to let you know that Jairo is interested in letting Gringos (and other Westerners) buy a little cabin on the property nestled in the trees. It would be a sweet get-a-way. It would cost $5000 and be small. But the real advantage is that when you are gone, the church would be able to rent it out as a retreat space and make money…not a bad deal…you could come for a year or a week every year or three months or whatever and live rent free. And then when you leave your cabin, it would bless the community. (And in case you were worried about safety, La Tigra does not have any tigers anymore. But they apparently used to. So, your safe.)
bLoG5: Honduras, Day Three in Los Pinos
Next to Iglesia en Tranformacion is a small-impoverished community called Los Pinos. There is one paved road through the town but mostly it is composed of a series of smaller dirt roads and many walking paths. Most of the homes are dilapidated, made of wood or mud or spare metal. Though power lines extend through the community, the residents of the community only use it for lights and other entertainment, not cooking. For cooking, they use propane. [When I entered into one of the homes and smelt the propane, it reminded me of the year I spent in Kenya without electricity cooking with either propane or coals or wood…oh, the memories…but I digress.] And they also have no running water.
I would never have entered Los Pinos by myself. It is not one of the places that one enters safely as an outsider. Accordingly, Tony (a former Utah resident who moved here almost two years ago) led me through. Only recently, he started going into Los Pinos. Because of the violence and possibility of harm, he began by merely driving through so that people would become more comfortable with him. Then he took very short walks. Now, he walks further in and even takes groups with him. (I believe The River went on a walk with him a year or so ago). It was amazing to enter Los Pinos with him. For the last few months, he has been serving the children of Los Pinos breakfast at the church (for 40-60 kids!) and hangs out with them afterwards. As we walked it was clear they the children of Los Pinos know him. At each turn, little voices would yell out “Tony.” It was beautiful how much they love him.
He took me to the school in Los Pinos, which has three rooms. Each classroom has 40 children and one teacher. And because it is so small, the kids can only attend half of the day. Kg, 1st, and 2nd grade meet in the am. 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade meet in the afternoon. Moreover, there is no water for the kids or the teachers to drink. To make matters worse the teachers are irregularly paid and this means that they have “meetings” weekly and school is canceled. To say the least, it is not an ideal situation. As we stood before the school, Tony imagined all that could be accomplished if only a few North Americans were willing to give up drinking Starbucks for a month and donate the money. Only a few hundred dollars would make such a difference…a sliver of our monthly incomes…
As we walked home, it began to rain and I recalled a time I was in Kenya hitchhiking. It was raining hard and so I caught a ride with a big truck. Since the inside of the truck was full, I jumped over the large truck bed and landed in manure. It was horribly wet and stinky! I imagine the driver was laughing so hard that he could hardly see. However, today, I made it home without any such adventure. In fact, we made it to the church rather dry.
bLoG6: Honduras Eating
Some of the most memorable times on my trip were eating with Jairo and his family. Jairo is the meat chef and the whole family, especially Lourdes, prepares the rest. We sat and talked as the food was prepared. The first night we ate Honduran enchiladas. So good! They are like Mexican tostados but with this cabbage, carrot, and lime topping. And Jairo has a Habenero bush in the back yard, which he uses to add flavor—and it did! It was worth coming to Honduras just for these enchiladas! They are the best enchiladas I have ever had and well worth the flight.
Another night, I ate chicken soup with Jairo and his family. It was perfectly flavored and delicious! I was surprised (impressed, rather) by the freshness of the soup. All of the ingredients were freshly growth within a few miles of the city. Less transport gas wasted and no preservatives used. And believe me, you could taste it. Lourdes combined all of the ingredients and as the food cooked in the pot, we sat and chatted. As an aside, they know how to eat and be together. We sat talking for hours, enjoying one another. It seems to me that this leisurely way of eating is the way to live.
I should also add that we ate tons of food for all meals, including breakfast. For instance, this morning we ate eggs, beans, freshly cooked tortillas, and tomalitos with cream. Tomatilos are like tamales but only with corn. We then put freshly whipped cream on top and it is one of my new favorite Honduran dishes. Though today I also ate a “streak” with a creamy jalapeño sauce, which was amazing! I’d never had anything like it…
bLoG7: Honduras Thoughts, Earth Ethics
As some of you know, more recently I have been focusing a considerable amount of my mental energy of ecology and the Kingdom of God. Driving with Jairo, I learned a lot about the ecological situation of his city. First, none of the water in Tegucigalpa is drinkable. And much of it, even if boiled, is still highly questionable. This is especially true on the extremely poor hillsides. Here the sewage merges with rainwater and finds its way into the streams. Not only does this likely kill all of the biotic life in the rivers, but this the very water that they drink and wash their clothes in. Their relationship to the earth is not only hurting the earth but themselves as well. The social structures (i.e., the city) they communally experience and cannot escape (only the rich can leave) is suffering from serious ecological poverty.
More than this, because they do not have any trash pick-up system (in part because the trucks cannot reach these steep dirt road hillside communities and likely because many of them don’t pay taxes), their trash ends up on the ground outside of their homes. This not only affects the soil but it, along with the other waste, is washed, during the rainy season, into the streams…and we know where that goes. And then there is the link to food…with the trash collecting on the ground randomly throughout the city but especially in the poorer dirt-street neighborhoods, even if they wanted to grow food, the soil’s wellness is questionable.
Moreover, you don’t need to be long in any Central American capital or small city for that matter to notice the car pollution. I usually develop a cough for a few days until my lungs “adjust” to the deluge. One of the most interesting facts about Central American pollution is related to US school bus sales. The US has certain pollution restrictions and when an old school bus does not meet those restrictions (and therefore is not “green” enough), they sell that very carbon emitting school bus to a Central American city. The school bus continues to pollute. As the US goes “green,” it profits by increasing the pollution in Central America. And this pollution is not merely a question of beauty or enjoyment. When I asked Jairo, if the pollution affects people, he reaction was proof enough—there was no question that it did!
Moreover, during the rainy season, Jairo explained that the runoff causes avalanches. This, however, was not always the case. Previously, there were trees on the hillsides, which prevented soil erosion and therefore such mudslides etc. However, because of deforestation, the soil is eroding more and more quickly leading to more and more hillside crashes. On our city tour, I saw the rubble of two recent rock/soil/house crumbling on the roadside.
Though we tend to not think of ecology and justice as brothers, they are. The way that the poor are trapped in cycles of ecological poverty is unjust in its most true sense. We are made of earth—remember our Genesis creation accounts. We are all earth creatures. We cannot live without earth. It is our substance animated by the breath of God. From earth, we receive our food and water. Earth soil is the fodder of our food. Earth water is the elixir of our life. Earth is us and we only continue to live with earth. Understood thus, living against earth is absurdly ironic. It is patently unjust. And yet it occurs everyday in all parts of the world too often unnoticed.
bLoG8: Honduras Thoughts, NAFTA
Driving along, I asked Jairo about NAFTA. Focusing on ethics in my master’s program, I had studied some about the effects of NAFTA on Mexico. What I learned was that Maquiladoras (large factories) have been built in Mexico. These factories attract many people to work. Most of these people leave their simple agricultural lives in the country to find work at these factories near the city. Even though the factories do not pay well, they offer stable wages. [Though this is somewhat tangential, one major problem around these factories is safety. Many of the workers are women and when they leave the factories, there have been horrifically high levels of rape in some places.] Potentially an even greater problem with the factories is that they only remain in the region as long as the wages that they can pay their workers are less than they can only them in other parts of the world. As soon as they can find workers who will work for cheaper wages, they pack up and move on. This creates a huge problem. Many workers have abandoned a somewhat sustainable agricultural life to come to city and work. But now there is no work and the skills they have learned in the factory are so specialized (maybe, they learn how to put on one part of a shoe or the collar on a shirt) that they cannot easily apply that skill in the open market—where they now need to find a means of living.
As I asked Jairo about these things, he said it happens similarly in Honduras. As we drove, he began to point out the different factories that have opened and closed since NAFTA came into being. He also explained that NAFTA is based on certain free market assumptions, which may not necessarily work. Simply, NAFTA is based on the assumption that both the US and other Central American countries have certain comparative advantages. [The ability to produce something more cheaply and then sell it for a greater profit.] The problem is that in Central America, or lets say Honduras, even if Hondurans have a comparative advantage, they don’t necessarily have the ability or the expertise or the power to take advantage of it. So, the US continues to export goods to Honduras and Hondurans hardly export the same amount of goods to the US. This means that many of the businesses in Honduras that could provide the goods, which the US exports, are put out of business.
bLoG9: Honduras Thoughts, Walls
If you have ever been to a “developing nation” (isn’t interesting how the words we use define our reality. Is Honduras developing or developed? Well, it depends on what we define as progress…but be that as it may), you have noticed walls, often with barbed wire at the top. Coming from the US, I have always had a negative association with such walls. Walls, in their very essence, are made to keep people out. In Berlin, it needed to be knocked down. In Northern Ireland, it still stands—though we too rarely talk about it. Prisons have walls—thought it is to keep people in—and the same is true with concentration camps: though the incarceration is for different reasons.
Driving, I asked Jairo about the many walls in Tegucigalpa. His answer seems to me to be pure wisdom and worth passing on. He explained that walls could be both negative and positive. Walls in the OT are often good. The walls around Jerusalem provide safety and protection from dangerous foes. Yet, he also explained that should walls allow for openness. The walls of Jerusalem were not always closed. During the day, the walls remained open except under certain extremely dangerous circumstances. And at night, the walls were closed. Yet, even then, a small door allowed desperate people to enter the city. In this way, the Jerusalem walls served both a protective and an inclusive purpose. Despite their divisive purpose, they allowed for openness.
In Tegucigalpa, I wondered how to navigate their issue. It is not simple. Thieves will enter if not walls stands in their way. Violent men must also be kept out. And property rights are also not secure. If no obvious boundary exists, people are able to put up a home and live there. Yet, what do we as Christians communicate when we set up walls? And while we may gain safety, we still must ask ourselves what do we lose? One wonders how much of the adversarial posture between the rich and poor would change if walls were not so central? Or, even if walls remain (and likely they need to) how can they serve a purpose like the walls of Jerusalem…how can they allow some openness?
And even in our neighborhoods, how do walls communicate the great Welcome of Jesus? How do walls function to divide us from our neighbors or even the poor and too often unwelcome? Do our walls serve an exclusive function or a protective function? And if we are walled, are the walls really necessary or are they a product of sinful fear? Do they protect us or divide us? Literal walls are erected throughout our Valley. After listening to Jairo, I wonder why?