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.

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.