Robbing Yourself Blind

Alcoholism is a plague on many Honduran families. Extreme poverty and cheap alcohol have never been a good mix anywhere. In Honduras there are a variety of cheap liquors that sell for as little as $1 for an entire liter. It is of such poor quality that people joke that it will make you go blind, and there is probably some truth to it. Few women in Honduras are alcoholics, due in part to a stigma against women drinking. Only recently have women started to actively go to bars to drink, however those women are most likely to have a steady job (many of them in the Honduran textiles industry) and they rarely drink excessively. The real drinking problem is mainly for Honduran men.

Honduran men drink are said to drink socially, medicinally and religiously. Wealthy men often like to show of their wealth by going to expensive bars and buying round after round after round of beers or ordering an expensive table service. Poorer Honduran men often see the richer Hondurans spending massive amounts of money, they in turn feel that it is there right and duty to spend half of their biweekly pay check on beer and liquor.

The Real Tropical Smoothie

In Honduras, few food and business regulations exist allowing a diverse range of small restaurants to flourish. Their are restaurants under tents, on the back of trucks and even attached to a bicycle.  Miguel is the proud owner of a "restaurant" on wheels. With the abundance of tropical fruit, several chain smoothie stores have sprung up in Honduras such as "Super Jugos." Miguel is working to cut into their market.

To start out, Miguel converted his bicycle into a three wheeled smoothie business. He started by adding a refrigerator section from an old ice cream cart, something commonly sold by bicyclists. He wanted to be different. He installed a car battery to the bike frame and attached three blenders to a small counter top. With a selection of various fruits and juice water and soda to use as mixers, he was set to launch his business. Miguel peddles his now tricycle around the center of town, stopping wherever there are a group of people to mix smoothies.

As a traveling salesman, Miguel pays no rent. He pays very little each week to have the car battery recharged. The same ice that he uses for the smoothies keeps his fruit cold in the well insulated freezer chest. The best thing of all is that he is constantly getting new customers who might live to far from an actual smoothie business or who would not have walked into a store to buy a similar product. Instead Miguel goes to the people. Bringing them a fresh smoothie to beat the tropical heat. Best of all they are delicious and cost less than a dollar. Miguel has spent years selling from his smoothie cart, it has helped sustain he, his wife and his five kids.

How would you support your family in Honduras? Could you be creative enough to survive?

Babies Having Babies

Teen pregnancies have been a problem the world over, but Honduras seems to be plagued by them. There are laws that are supposed to prevent it, but nothing can be done unless a formal denouncement is made with the police (and even then nothing is often done). Hospital maturity wards are filled with teenagers waiting to give birth. UNICEF claims that nearly 26% of Honduran women gave birth for the first time before they turned 18. For girls 15-19 years old, there are 108 births per 1,000 girls. In the United States, the fathers of the most teenage births are usually only a few years older than the mother. In Honduras, it is often a lot more than a few years age difference and the problem has been happening for decades.

Sara was 13 years old when Jose first approached her. Jose was a tall lanky, 33 year old security guard. He lived down the street from her and saw her almost everyday as he walked past her house on his way home. In poor communities like theirs, couples with 10, 15 or even 20 years difference in age seemed to be the norm. Jose already had 4 children by two other women, but over time they could not put up with his partying ways. Sara wanted to get out of her house. She acted older than her age and warmed to Jose's flirting as he passed by. One day Jose decided to make his move, he went to her house and "robbed" her from her family.

Turtle Eggs: The Little Blue Pills of Honduras

Wherever large groups of men and testosterone congregate, there is sure to be a number of people trying profit off of the gathering. Most of the time the vendors try to sell beer, hot dogs or some other “manly” food item. Others who try to profit are the mariachi bands that wonder the streets from bar to bar, trying to find someone to pay them to play a tune. There is one vendor though that exudes testosterone/machismo: the turtle egg saleswoman.

Why Buy a Gun When You Can Make One for $5?

Gang violence in Honduras is a monthly (and sometimes weekly) headline. Guns are almost always a big focus of the story. Guns are fear spreading machines, which means they hold a godlike power in the eyes of the gangs. In recent years, drug cartels and the large Central American gangs have been buying up weapons as fast as they can, preparing for World War III. Many people have said that if you can dry up the gang's funds, then you can stop the flow of guns, which will in turn stop the violence. That is a false causality. The premise is that guns are expensive (and that the only gang violence is gun related). Unfortunately in Honduras, a gun can be built from scratch for all of $5, by a 14 year old. They might not be able to produce anything that could be reloaded quickly, but if you get shot by it you would be just as dead as if it had been an expensive weapon.

Working the Streets Since Age 14

Dania still looked like she should be in middle school. She was taller than most girls, but she had a baby's face.  It was as if she stopped getting older the day she ran away from the orphanage. She was just 14. Dania felt that she had made the right decision. There had been no hope for her, or at least that was he excuse. She had been a trouble maker, like many teenagers and wanted to be free of rules.  Dania's belief was that she would have turned out the same if she had stayed or if she had run away (and she may not have been too far off from the truth).

Dania's story is one that unfortunately is not all that uncommon.  Honduras is a country with high poverty, few jobs and a plethora of 12 and 13 year old mothers. Honduran women are often are treated as trophies that can be won or even stolen away. They are something that can be purchased, which unfortunately many women in Honduras have ending up doing every night. Dania ran away and looked for ways to take make a living. There were few jobs available for a 14 year old, so she followed the foot steps of other girls from the orphanage and eventually ended up in a bar selling more than just beer. Many women are forced into prostitution in Honduras, they take out loans with the wrong people and end up paying the loan off with their "services." Others like Dania join because there are few other options for them to be able to put bread on the table.

Paying the Ultimate Price for Employment

Francisco lived a peaceful life. He liked the rural area, where he and his family were tucked into the hills of the Valle de Sula. Francisco , his wife and his four kids shared a house with his parents. It was a safe place to raise his children, much safer than the city where he worked everyday. To support his family, Francisco would leave at 5 AM each day so his long commute would not make him late. He rode his bike each morning down the 2km dirt road until he would reach the paved highway into town. From there it was nearly 15kms into town. Six days a week Fransisco would make the trek into town, labor all day as a construction assistant and then at 5:30 PM he would bike the 17km home. After working 60 to 70 hours each week, he would be able to brink home nearly $55. If he could maintain steady work, that would mean that Francisco would earn nearly $1,000 more than the Gross National Income per capita of nearly $1, 700.

Francisco's wife had pleaded with her husband to take the bus.  It would only cost him 60 cents each way, but for Francisco he knew that meant that almost 15 percent of his pay would be spent just getting to work each day. He finally convinced his wife that he preferred to ride his bike than having to walk the 2km road uphill to his family's home. For years Francisco had been able to keep steady work, unfortunately the Honduran rainy season meant that fewer construction jobs were planned during the winter months. Little by little he was saving money, even hoping to find some land to build a house and move his family out of his parent's house.

Then one Friday night Francisco did not make it home. His wife always worried about him, but he would sometimes stop and visit with friends or even stop in at a local bar on his way home. It was not until the frantic screams from her mother-in-law that she knew something had happened. A neighbor of Francisco's who was coming home from work as well was the first one to reach Francisco's family to tell him that he was dead, shot in the head not more than 20 feet from the entrance to the dirt road that would have taken him home. By the time his family got to the road, a group of people had already gathered around Francisco's body.

What Do You Do In a Country With No Tow Trucks?

Let me start off by saying that there is at least one tow truck in Honduras. In two years of living here, I have seen it once. It was being towed.

Imagine yourself 10 miles outside of the nearest town. Your cell phone is dead and you have just blown a head gasket. In Honduras there is no AAA service or 1-800 number to get someone to come help you. So what do you do when you break down, since Murphy's law states that it will happen in the most inopportune time and place? Trust the Hondurans to take care of you.

Previous Employment Experiance? Hitman

Carlos by most standards was a friendly man.  Carlos is slightly overweight. He is of medium height and has a moppy head of hair. He has a wife and children, which by most appearances he seems to take good care of them.  The only way you would know of his sinister past would be if he walked up to you and told you what had done. When a man leans in close to you and tells you he has killed 17 people you know its the start of an unforgettable conversation. For starters you are not sure you even want to have the conversation. I stayed though and this is the tale I was told. 

A Day of Two Funerals

Most people hope to die of old age, to have a long and healthy life. For the average Honduran winning the lottery sometimes seems more probable. Many poor Hondurans do make it, but for everyone that makes it there seem to be two or three or four who are cut down in their prime by the difficult lifestyle that they live.  One day, during my first week living in Honduras, I was witness two an example of both cases: the somber funeral to recognize the unfortunate death of a child killed by the forces of nature and her families own poverty; and the wake of and elderly man which devolved into a large farm party to celebrate someone who won the lottery and had been rewarded with many years of life.

Wilfredo was a traveling vegetable salesman. He would have to travel long distances to find cheap produce to be able to smake any money. He had recently reunited with his family after having spent a few years away from them, having illegally immigrated to the United States to work.  With the money he had brought back from the United States, Wilfredo bought the cheapest pickup truck he could find and started selling fruit out of the back of the truck in various neighborhoods. His family had been living in a poor squatters community close to the mountains. With hopes that his fortunes where changing, Wilfredo moved his family out of their patchwork hut and moved into the city so that he could be closer to his work and to hopefully be able to see more of his family.

The family was now living in a cinder block one roomed apartment in town instead of the wooden hut that Wilfredo had built for his family close to the mountains. The apartment was in older part of town, where many low income families rented cheaply made apartment complexes. Cracks showed along many of the walls where the cinder blocks had long ago separated from the mortar that had originally held the walls in place. The important thing though was that the rent was actually affordable. Wilfredo went to work on May 27th feeling that things were finally looking up for him and his family. In the early morning hours of May 28th his three daughters; Sara, Cindi and Alexa, slept in their small one room apartment with their mother. At 2:30 AM, a 7.3 earthquake struck offshore. 100 miles from where Wilfredo's family slept. One would have to drive an hour to find the nearest beach, where the earthquake was felt the strongest. Thousands and thousands of buildings where much closer to the earthquake epicenter than their own apartment building.

Honduran Construction Companies

The three main jobs for a Honduran are working as a Security Guard, a farm field hand or as a construction worker. While their are various wealthy construction companies there are also many neighborhood construction companies. These small time "companies" usually consist of at least 3 to 5 albaniles (construction workers) who have very little access to capital to invest into their business. Instead they must do with what is easily at hand. The results are varied, but my favorite example of Honduran ingenuity is the two wheeled, energy efficient work vehicle.

Hondurans do everything on a bicycle. They will pick up their two kids from school. They will modify them to create various business opportunities. Best of all they use them to deliver construction equipment and supplies to various job sites. On several occasions I have seen someone dragging 3 or 4 fourteen foot long segments of metal rebar on their bicycles. On one occasion the individual must have been nearly 6 miles from the nearest construction supply store.