Hondruan Department of Transportation

In Honduras road repairs is a concept that often seems like a foreign concept. In fact many of the road repairs are foreign. The Millennium Challenge Account and other international projects, organizations or even companies  spear point most road repairs or new road construction. The few Honduran Government road projects seem to get stuck in the mire of political appointees and red tape. The road from El Progreso to Tela is just such an example of a project that seems to have gotten stuck in the planning stage. The area has been surveyed multiple times by various companies as different political groups each have their own study done of the area.

In some cities and states in the United States, there are websites or radio shows to call in your reports of bad potholes. If you talk to locals in the area of Copan, they will tell you that the government waits until after a major storm or hurricane to repair the roads so that all of the old potholes and mudslides can be blamed on the most recent storm. Most of the time those big storms are followed by international aide to repair "vital" infrastructure in the country.  In Honduras potholes can easily eat car tires by the dozens. Some areas are so bad, that tire repair stands have set up along the worst roads to gain from the misfortune of some drivers. Others take a different approach to make a profit off of the lack of road repair.

The real Honduran Department of Transportation most likely does to some form of work, but they are not who ones sees most out on the streets making repairs. In wealthy neighborhoods or on busy roads potholes can mean lots of traffic or damaged cars. To avoid that problem people are often willing to pay a price to get it fixed. That is where the poor (ingenious) Honduran steps into the picture. Armed with a shovel and a wheelbarrow load of dirt one can become a one or two man road repair squad. Unlike many workers, they do not know if they will get paid before starting. Instead the plan usually consists of someone standing in the middle of the road with a shovel full of dirt. When a car goes by they will occasionally tip the worker for repairing the pothole. When the worker receives the "tip," he will add another the shovel full of dirt into the pothole. The more the worker gets tipped, the more the pothole is repaired.

The summer of 2009 brought a lot of work for anyone wanting work as a road repair man. Mainly it took being in the right place at the right time. Firstly the earthquake left one of the most important bridges in shambles. The democracy bridge collapsed and the Japanese bridge in El Progreso was damaged. The gap between the bridge and the pavement widened created a gap that created heavy traffic and blew out more than a few car tires. Teams stepped in to man both sides of the bridge.They would fill the gap and the cars would glide over the gap. Miraculously the dirt would vanish in the middle of the night, keeping the two groups of men supplied with jobs for a month or two until repairs were officially commissioned to weld heavy metal plates into the gap to fix the problem. Recently though, the problem has returned. Either the metals plates were stolen or the have sunken down into the gap; regardless the men are back to work. Ever two weeks or so they appear for a few days to gain some extra money by filling the gap.

After the earthquake, the political situation had a big impact on road conditions. Many international organizations canceled their infrastructure aid or froze it until the crisis had been resolved. This left roads in a state of disrepair that went beyond the norm. This meant more work for anyone willing to stand next to the road for hours and gather "tips." Political protests provided even more opportunities for such individuals to make some extra money. As main roads were blocked off, people started using dirt or mountain roads to get around the protesters who had a tendency to "take" the most important bridges. Those dirt and mountain roads ended up with two or three lanes of traffic on them (including buses and dump trucks) when they were meant to have only one lane driven by pick-up trucks. Gangs of children and men gathered together to fill in holes in the road, open up paths in fields for cars to travel through or to aid someone when their car failed the test of endurance on the back roads of Honduras. Some even created rope or people chains to block traffic until each car paid for the road repairs.

When the Honduran government fails to provide for its people, the people take matters into their own hands. Some say that they prefer to pay for repairs in such a manner as they know their money is going directly to the repairs instead of into the pockets of politicians. Dirt and rocks though will never be able to take the place of a newly asphalted road. Now that Zelaya has returned and Pepe is tip toeing through the international system, money should hopefully begin to reappear for important infrastructure projects.

The Posse Deals Out Their Own Justice

Alejandro, his wife and four kids lived peacefully in squatter's village in their small one room shack. Their house was made from old tarps, card board and the few pieces of wood and metal roofing panels that Alejandro had been able to find at the city dump. The house sat at the edge of a stream bed that snaked down from the mountains providing a cool place for Alejandro's children to cool off from the tropical heat. On the other side of the stream was another village, almost of equal poverty. One day a large group of people from from that village crossed the stream and made their way straight for Alejandro's house.

How to Punish a Tree for Misbehaving

Jose was an elderly farmer. He claims to still do things the way they used to be, and still aught to be, done. He plants almost all of his plants based on the cycle of the moon. He recommends waiting for a good full moon to plant yuca and to always cut off banana saplings during the last quarter moon. His small piece of land in the hills is filled with all varieties of fruit trees, vegetables, spices and medicinal herbs. He can tell you the the names of everything in his garden, along with 3 or 4 good reasons that everyone should have said plant too. He plants almost everything in small pots and old containers so that as time goes on he can move things around to make more room in certain spots or to allow plants to get more sun a various times of the year. He even has one "medicinal" plant that he takes inside at night so that no one will steal it for its "healing" leaves.

One tree though stands out among all the rest of the plants around Jose's house. While being given a tour of house once, I made the mistake of asking him what kind of fruit was hanging from the 12 foot tall tree. It had about 20 large grey and black shapes hang from various branches and one assumes that the tree is supposed to come that way. My credibility as a Honduran farmer vanished as soon as I vocalized my inability to identify what was hanging from the branches. Jose just looked at me and hissed "they are rocks! I never thought I'd meet someone who didn't know what a rock looked like." In my defiance I have seen lots of rocks, just never seen twenty or so of them dangling from a tree.